Friday, October 10, marks the 12th Annual World Day Against the Death Penalty. This year’s theme is “Care, Don’t Kill: Mental Disorder Is Never a Crime.”
It may come as a shock, but California has the single largest death row in the Western Hemisphere. With 750 condemned prisoners and a new, court-ordered psychiatric hospital constructed just this year, it’s important to recognize the the significance of this World Day for California, and the state’s role in the lingering existence of the death penalty in the US and around the world.
To commemorate this year’s event, and our first ever Death Penalty Focus Week, we’ve assembled a short list of relevant articles about the issue of mental health in terms of our movement to finally put an end to executions.
Our first article comes from two members of a group we work closely with, California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Nick and Amanda Wilcox lost their daughter at the hands of a person who slipped through the cracks in the state’s mental health system. They now advocate for improved services instead of the death penalty.
The second piece is an infographic from earlier this year detailing how mental disorders are the norm, not the exception, when it comes to who gets executed in the US.
Next, there is an article by esteemed law professor Charles Ogletree about the meaning of this year’s Supreme Court case which reiterated the fact that executing people with intellectual disabilities runs in fundamental opposition to the value we place on human dignity.
After that, there is an article by LA Times correspondent Paige St. John on the mixed messages sent by the construction of a new, court-ordered psychiatric ward for California’s death row as condemned prisoners face decades of solitary confinement, which compounds or creates new mental illnesses.
Finally we pass along the facts about mental health and the death penalty worldwide, according to our allies at the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.