Principal Addresses
Start Date
26-1-2005 9:05 AM
End Date
26-1-2005 11:00 AM
Description
Ronald Honberg, director of legal affairs for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, noted that evidence of mental illness is often not presented to juries tasked with considering a sentence of death, and even when it is, jurors are not qualified to make judgments about what extent the disorder did or did not play in the crime. "We ask jurors to perform an impossible task," he said, when they are expected to perform the role of doctor or psychiatrist in the jury box. Honberg pointed out that since many defendants accused of capital crimes are too mentally ill to even recognize their impairment, they can't fully understand the consequence of the death sentence itself.
Principal Addresses
Ronald Honberg, director of legal affairs for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, noted that evidence of mental illness is often not presented to juries tasked with considering a sentence of death, and even when it is, jurors are not qualified to make judgments about what extent the disorder did or did not play in the crime. "We ask jurors to perform an impossible task," he said, when they are expected to perform the role of doctor or psychiatrist in the jury box. Honberg pointed out that since many defendants accused of capital crimes are too mentally ill to even recognize their impairment, they can't fully understand the consequence of the death sentence itself.