ABA to release White Paper on mental health and death penalty

The American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project along with The Equitas Foundation and Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative will host a luncheon on Tuesday, Dec. 6 at the Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center in Washington, D.C., to discuss Mental Illness and the Death Penalty. This is an issue that is gaining national momentum with bipartisan calls for establishing an exemption from capital punishment for people with severe mental illnesses.

ABA President-elect Hilarie Bass will be the keynote speaker at the lunch titled, “Taking Action on the National Consensus to End the Execution of Individuals with Severe Mental Illness.” Deanne Ottaviano, general counsel for the American Psychological Association, and Ronald S. Honberg, national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, will also speak.

The ABA will release a White Paper at the event that provides the first comprehensive examination of legal and policy issues surrounding severe mental illness and the death penalty.

Although the ABA does not take a position supporting or opposing the death penalty generally, it does advocate that, if used, it must be applied fairly and with due process. The media luncheon and White Paper are an effort to educate legal professionals, policy makers, and the public on the subject of severe mental illness and the death penalty and to support policy reform efforts to exempt individuals with severe mental illness from the death penalty.

There is a growing national trend towards reform in this area, with at least eight (and possibly more than a dozen) state legislatures considering severe mental illness exemption bills in 2017.The ABA is joined by various mental health organizations in supporting reform.