Mentally disabled man executed in Georgia, US

[Anny Nym]

"Georgia State authorities denied a personal pardon to a man, suffering intellectual disabilities and having ‘the mind of an 11-year-old boy’, and executed him on Wednesday despite social protests and efforts of his lawyers to cancel the punishment, AP reported on Wednesday."

http://sputniknews.com/us/20150128/1017454607.html

What´s your thoughts on this? Why was he not in a mental facility, but with common prison population in the first place? Does the factor of him being a black male play maybe some serious part in this decision?

What are your general thoughts on the death penalty still being in place in the USA?

[browncoatslytherin]

i had not heard of this before, but honestly, i can't say i'm surprised it happened in georgia.

obviously, he had issues of some kind. he murdered his girlfriend and his cellmate. the article said he has the mind of an 11 year old. i knew at 11 that murder was wrong. hell, i knew before then. but the issue is that he wouldn't be able to appropriately understand the consequences of his actions, which i suppose is debatable, depending on his level of disability. definitely think he should have at the very least been put in a secure psych facility until further notice.

[Firiel]

So, I knew at 11 that harming others was wrong. There's also the whole concept that saying a person is X years old mentally is a rough measurement, at best. There has been some great discussions on that topic in some threads here about husbands with TBIs. His ability for emotional restraint may be under 11.

That being said, I don't support the death penalty at all, and this is one of the reasons. There is no "line" where one person magically understands enough to take full responsibility for their crime and another person with one less IQ point doesn't. Plus, better resources for children with mental deficiencies can make a world of difference and teach them the coping skills they need in order to function as a person with adult strength and access without an adult mental capacity to manage that strength and access. And the consequence of misjudging that imagined line of "responsible" or "unable to be responsible" should not be the death of a person.

[BrownieMomma]

I don't know what you might rationally expect from an 11yo in terms of judgment and maturity but I sure as hell expect them to understand to not murder people.

The biggest glaring thing I saw in that article is what the heck, the lawyers produced three new medical statements just days before the execution. This guy was charged back in 1986, killed his cellmate in 1991 so obviously got sent to prison sometime between 86 and 91, it's now 2015 and the lawyers are just now ponying up medical proof of the disability?

A previous exam in 2000 did not confirm mental disease. It stands to reason he may have mentally deteriorated over the years while in prison so what was the point exactly? Why was this not proven way back when?

Some bad lawyering there, perhaps. And a gofundme ofc. Of course.

The gofundme for the dead girlfriend and cellmate. Oh. They are dead, their lives don't matter. But their murderer has the mentality of an 11yo, someone claims, and 11yo's are not expected to understand to not murder people. By all means let us throw money at the murderer.

He deserves mercy and clemency and leniency while two other people rot in their graves, while other people mourn and miss them, but neither of their deaths matter because they had the great misfortune to cross paths with a man whose great excuse is that he thinks like an 11yo while the lawyers and whoever else seem to forget that most 11yo's realize HEY LETS NOT MURDER PEOPLE TODAY.

It's bad and it's wrong and I shouldn't do it, even if I am 11 years old.

Which of course makes me a judgmental racist bigoted bitch for daring to give a few shits about the real victims and their families. For daring to say a course of action which ends with dead people is wrong and deserves punishment. Maybe I'd be more sympathetic to the Twinkie defense than an eff'd up defense of nothing more than "he thinks like an 11yo."

[doggie]

the mentally disabled killed by the mentally unable.

[momof2treasures]

The labeling of an age in terms of mental disability is not logical. He may have tested at a 6th grade level on specific testing but lacked emotional maturity and self control much like a toddler would behave especially under stress. So to say I knew killing was wrong at 11 isn't really the an equal comparison. He may have known it was wrong but in the moment couldn't process the situation . It's very sad that 2 people died and ,disabled or not, he is clearly a dangerous person but is it fair to execute him?

[2xx1xy1JD]

I don't support the death penalty in general.

I can understand the moral impulse to say that someone is so horrible that they had given up the right to life. I can also understand that in some situations (war, or a situation where someone's risk to others cannot be controlled by prison), it could be considered a matter of self-defense.

The problem is that society and the justice system are not perfect, and without a perfect system, you risk killing people who should not be killed. Wrongful convictions happen, and we also know that factors like race and socio-economic status play a big role in that.

[Childless]

Human beings being the imperfect creatures we are, the death penalty should absolutely be banned.

[RosyDaisy]

The death penalty should be outlawed....PERIOD.....for all the reasons listed above.

[Grimalkin]

Another person against death penalty. I do however agree that he should not get off easy and be held accountable for his crimes.

Mental age is misleading. My sister is "officially" one mentally. She does not speak more than a few words. She does understand instructions she can answer yes if you ask her if she is hungry. Not so much with pain though. She can use the toilette independentaly, shower herself, she took care of feminine hygiene, ties her own shoes, and can do most grooming as needed. I think the biggest barrier for her is her communicating her needs. It leads to frustration and the occasional outburst. I have known many moderately mentally challanged who knew right from wrong. As to if they understood the consequences..... It gets fuzzy there.

I am not sure what a 70 IQ translates though.

I definitely think if he were white he would be someplace else, I wonder if he would of commuted the second murder if he were white and placed in a different enviornment.

[DGayle]

There are some people I would love to see tormented to death, like people who torture children, but when it comes down to it, I'm against the death penalty because I'd rather those monsters rot than to risk executing someone who's innocent. I don't doubt innocent people have been executed.

[crazyforkate]

The death penalty has no place in the modern world. It just doesn't. Quite apart from the possibility of executing an innocent person, or the expense of all the appeals, it's simply wrong to engage in the eye-for-an-eye mentality. It turns justice into vengeance. It brings us down to their level and erodes our own conscience. Lock them up, sure. But indulging in such pointless, primal retribution is the mark of barbarism.

[SoGladIWasCofE]

Mental age is psychologically speaking, total nonsense, FYI. It's been massively opposed within intellectual/developmental disability circles for years for good reason. And it's pretty clearly nonsense the second you give it a moment of critical thinking, too. A 20 year, old, even if they know the same amount of words as an average 5 year old, obviously has things like a sexuality, 15 years more life experiences, adult brain size and so on. And it's very obvious that their brains don't actually work like those of children - there's a huge difference between a child who doesn't understand a word because they've never heard it before, and an adult who doesn't understand it because they have difficulty with language.

And what a lot of you guys seem to be thinking is that he has a "mental age" of 11 and should therefore be treated as we would treat an 11 year old who committed the same crime? As a disabled person, wow, seriously. No. We have a right to be treated as our chronological age. This is a serious rights issue, and we've been fighting for it for years. Developmentally disabled people have a right both to be tried as our true ages, and to have all the rights that come with adulthood.

So, essentially, if he committed these crimes, he has a right to the same punishment as any other person. The exception to this is if he actually didn't know what he was doing. And this is separate from treating someone differently because they are a child. A child can understand that they were stealing and get off much more lightly than an adult would, that's a different thing. This more like someone genuinely not knowing what the gun would do type situation, or someone having difficulty controlling their strength due to motor control problems or something. Where a manslaughter charge might be more appropriate.

There's also the thing where someone else was manipulating or controlling them, which some disabled people are easy targets for, which should be treated basically however you'd treat another adult who was manipulated and tricked into doing something.

So, what I'm getting at is that this man, if he was guilty of those crimes, should absolutely be given the exact same punishment a non-disabled person would get. And he has a right to that.

The morality of the death penalty is a different issue, personally I think it's completely bonkers, and a terrible, terrible idea all round, especially given the number of people exonerated after their executions. And it doesn't help anyone, these people would never get out anyway.