Yeah, this was before that decision (Washington was pardoned in 2000, Atkins v. Virginia was 2002). He was NINE DAYS from execution when he was pardoned based upon DNA evidence. Jeez! The Innocence Project is such a great use of science. :)
Sometime around 1998 there was a mass murder at a Wendy's near my parents. Apparently many of the actual killings were carried out by an employee with mental retardation (or whatever the PC term is). The partner got the death penalty - I believe it was the first carried out in NY since it'd been reinstated. Not sure what sentence the man with retardation got.
As for "happy, gentle folks," that certainly is the common opinion. Do you know if any systematic studies have been done to help disprove that?
Yeah, the Innocence Project is amazing. It's also extremely scary how many people have been found to be innocent that way...
I'm not sure if any systematic studies have been done to disprove the 'happy, gentle' stereotype. I think it's clear though that some people with retardation are, for some reason or another, more irritable and prone to violence than others, and those ones, due to their retardation, have fewer resources to counteract that disposition. Whether other people with retardation, even the vast majority, have gentle predispositions is totally irrelevant.
in the article about the Wendy's I was struck by a tangential but interesting fact - the prosecuter was personally opposed to the death penalty but sought it for the non-retarded defendant anyway. How could anyone DO that?? I'm confused.
Prosecutors have a lot of leeway in terms of which crimes they want to prosecute and which sentences they want to pursue. A prosecutor, I'm pretty sure, doesn't have to prosecute someone who they actually think is innocent, and doesn't have to ask for a sentence that they don't think the person deserves (unless the sentence is statutorily mandated, which the death penalty never is)
Defense lawyers have to defend the people they're assigned to, but usually they actually value that service, even though they might not like the idea of people who have committed crimes getting out of punishments they might deserve.
My understanding is that the term "mental retardation" is defined solely by ones' IQ. (This seemed to be the case when we were suing the state of Arizona to obtain state-subsidized housing for my developmentally disabled brother.) And a sub-normal IQ can happen several different ways - injury to various parts of the brain or just failure of the brain to fully develop. My guess is that an abnormal disposition (whether it be violent or sunny) depends on which part of the brain is causing the mental affliction. We might be able to correlate abnormal moods with specific areas of the brain, which would certainly be interesting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-05-06 06:45 am (UTC)Sometime around 1998 there was a mass murder at a Wendy's near my parents. Apparently many of the actual killings were carried out by an employee with mental retardation (or whatever the PC term is). The partner got the death penalty - I believe it was the first carried out in NY since it'd been reinstated. Not sure what sentence the man with retardation got.
As for "happy, gentle folks," that certainly is the common opinion. Do you know if any systematic studies have been done to help disprove that?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 07:17 am (UTC)I'm not sure if any systematic studies have been done to disprove the 'happy, gentle' stereotype. I think it's clear though that some people with retardation are, for some reason or another, more irritable and prone to violence than others, and those ones, due to their retardation, have fewer resources to counteract that disposition. Whether other people with retardation, even the vast majority, have gentle predispositions is totally irrelevant.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 02:32 pm (UTC)Defense lawyers have to defend the people they're assigned to, but usually they actually value that service, even though they might not like the idea of people who have committed crimes getting out of punishments they might deserve.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-06 02:19 pm (UTC)