That's the title of an editorial published in the current issue of New Scientist.
FEW topics invoke such passionate feelings in the US as the death penalty, especially when applied to convicts with the intellectual capacity of children.
In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled that executing people with an intellectual disability was unconstitutional, citing a "national consensus" against it. Unfortunately the ruling failed to end the practice, in that it left it up to individual states and courts to decide how to assess intellectual disability.
Those assessments are often flawed. Many courts fail to accept scientific facts on the limitations of IQ testing, such as inevitable measurement errors. Inmates are also on death row because their IQ happened to be assessed using old tests (see "Death by IQ: US inmates condemned by flawed tests").
Convicts pleading intellectual disability must also prove that they have significant deficits in basic life skills, such as dealing with money. Assessment of this is, if anything, a bigger problem.
Texas, which executes more people than any other state, is home to some particularly egregious practices. For example, though validated tests of life skills exist, Texan courts favour standards that have no scientific basis. These include vague considerations such as the ability to tell lies and whether people who know the defendant think he or she is "mentally retarded". This is absurd, turning a complex clinical judgement over to witnesses with no specialist training.
Some Texan courts also accepted expert witness testimony from psychologist George Denkowski, who argued that life-skills scores for people from impoverished backgrounds should be adjusted upwards because they were brought up in an environment in which skills such as hygiene were not valued.
Denkowksi was stopped from making assessments in April 2011, but by then 14 of the men he assessed were on death row and two had already been executed.
Earlier coverage of the case and execution of Marvin Wilson begins at the link; past coverage of Texas psychologist George Denkowski is also available.
Related posts are in the mental retardation index.
As I often point out, mental retardation is now generally referred to as a developmental or intellectual disability. Because it has a specific meaning with respect to capital cases, I continue to use the older term.
More on Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling banning the execution of those with mental retardation, is via Oyez.
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