‘Hundreds of mentally ill US inmates on death row’

HUNDREDS of mentally-ill prisoners are facing execution in the US, according to an Amnesty International report.

The human rights campaigners said an estimated 10% of the 3,400 people on death row were thought to have conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, brain damage and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

They also claimed one-in-10 of more than 1,000 people executed in the past 30 years suffered from mental illness.

Amnesty said defendants with mental conditions had been allowed to conduct their own defences, waive their rights to appeal and “volunteer” to be executed.

More than a quarter of the 100 mentally-ill prisoners executed since 1977 had done the latter, in some cases because they had “clearly despaired” of receiving treatment.

Many courts never heard any evidence of mental illness, the report said, and US prosecutors exploited public ignorance or fear about mental illness by arguing that the “unremorseful” demeanour of mentally-ill defendants was further grounds for death sentences.

Amnesty said it was wrong that while US courts had ruled that “evolving standards of decency” made the execution of child offenders and those with learning disabilities unlawful, they continued to allow those with severe mental conditions to receive death sentences.

Only in one state, Connecticut, is the execution of a prisoner outlawed on the grounds that they were mentally ill at the time of the crime.

Amnesty spokesman Mike Blakemore said: “We appeal to [George W Bush] to use his powers to end the execution of mentally-ill prisoners in the USA.”