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The U.S. Supreme Court decided 15 years ago that it is cruel and unusual to execute people with intellectual disabilities. Yet, at least two of the 12 people executed so far this year had clear intellectual deficits, and now Texas is fighting for the right to execute another man so disabled that he can barely identify the seasons or the days of the week.
North Carolina, too, is still pushing for the execution of several men with intellectual disabilities. Timothy Richardson, who has been on death row since 1995, is among them.
Richardson’s mother drank heavily during pregnancy. He suffered severe lead poisoning as a toddler. He failed in school, and as an adult, functioned at the level of an 11 or 12 year old.
Neither the Supreme Court’s clear ruling in 2002, nor the court’s 2014 reaffirmation of its commitment to sparing mentally disabled people, have persuaded a court to declare that Richardson cannot be executed.
North Carolina has tried for decades to reform the death penalty, to reserve it for only the most blame-worthy defendants who commit the most heinous crimes. Yet, again and again, our system has failed in its mission to make the death penalty fair.
Read Timothy Richardson’s story, and learn about how the death penalty unjustly targets people with mental illness and intellectual disability.
The post Executing intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional, but N.C. tries anyway appeared first on NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
