Double Tragedies

That's the title of a new report issued by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, available here.

The news release, "Death Penalty and Mental Illness: Families of Victims Speak Out at National

Convention; 'Double Tragedies' Report Released," is by Susannah Sheffer.

For the first time, families of murder victims have joined with families of persons with mental illness who have been executed to speak out against the death penalty.

Double Tragedies, a report being released today at a special session on the first day of the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly led to tragic violence."

The report calls for treatment and prevention, not execution. It is available online at www./nami.org/doubletragedies.

The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in cases involving defendants with mental retardation (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002) and juvenile defendants (Roper v. Simmons 2005).

The report, a joint project of NAMI and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), is based on extensive interviews with 21 family members from 10 states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

"Family opposition to the death penalty is grounded in personal tragedy," said MVFHR executive director Renny Cushing. "In the public debate about the death penalty and how to respond in the aftermath of violent crime, these are the voices that need to be heard."

"Most people with mental illness are not violent," said NAMI executive director Mike Fitzpatrick. "When violent tragedies occur they are exceptional -- because something has gone terribly wrong, usually in the mental health care system. Tragedies are compounded and all our families suffer."

The report identifies an "intersection" of family concerns and makes four basic recommendations:

• Ban the death penalty for people with severe mental illnesses.
• Reform the mental health care system to focus on treatment.
• Recognize the needs of families of murder victims through rights to information and participation in criminal or mental health proceedings.
• Families of executed persons also should be recognized as victims and given the assistance due to any victims of traumatic loss.  

Diane Jennings writes, "Families of victims and families of mentally ill offenders release death penalty report," at the Dallas Morning News Crime blog. 

Double Tragedies, a report detailing the impact of capital crimes committed by mentally ill people, is being released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. The two organizations launched a campaign last year in San Antonio in opposition to the death penalty for the mentally ill.

One of the Texas cases highlighted in the report is that of Larry Robison of Tarrant County who killed five people several years after being diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. His parents, Lois and Ken Robison tried for years to get help for him.

"Everybody said they couldn't help him, because he wasn't violent," Lois Robison told the report's author Susannah Sheffer. "And if he ever got violent, then they would commit him to a mental hospital. And instead they committed him to death row."

Larry Robison was executed in 2000.

Sheffer, said she heard similar stories over and over. "Sometimes these families are perceived as "sort of neglectful and not involved," she says. But "it's not a case of somebody not trying--they tried every conceivable thing and this is what happened."

Related articles are in StandDown's mental illness index.