Senator and retired circuit judge Arthur Rusch is working to bar the death penalty for people with severe mental illness. The death penalty is already prohibited for juveniles and people with intellectual disabilities.
In committee testimony, Senator Rusch says mental illness isn’t a choice.
“It’s something that they suffer under for many years—many of them for many years. So, in that respect it’s not any different from age or intellectual disability.”
Another proponent, psychiatrist Steve Manlove, says mental illness impacts decision making processes in the brain.
“In almost all mental illnesses we’ve been able to define there’s a problem in communication in that circuit that brings information that makes you think about the impulse that you’ve got.”
But opponents say this bill complicates existing protections. Lawrence County States Attorney John Fitzgerald says prosecutors must first prove first degree murder in a death penalty case.
“And if the jury is satisfied that there has been, you move to the penalty stage in the bifurcated system. And the second stage is where the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of a list of aggravating circumstances.”
Those circumstances include murdering children, torture, and other specifics.
Pennington County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Lara Roetzel adds severely mentally ill defendants are already protected in law.
“We could never prosecute someone who is incompetent. Let’s make sure we’re removing that as something different from what we’re doing today. And also, insanity: no one who is insane at the time they committed the crime could ever be found guilty.”
A late amendment prevented the attorney general’s office from offering testimony, so the Senate Judiciary Committee is deferring action on the bill until its meeting on Thursday, February 20th.