NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Committed to ending the death penalty and creating a new vision of justice

Why end the death penalty?

People with intellectual disabilities and mental illness are unfairly sentenced

Frank Chambers' school photos and elementary school progress report
Frank Chambers’ school photos and elementary school records

The U.S. Supreme Court says the death penalty is intended for the most culpable defendants who commit the most heinous crimes. In practice, it often falls on people with intellectual disabilities and severe mental illness — those with a diminished capacity to understand their actions or to participate in their defense.

Under a 2001 North Carolina law, the death penalty is prohibited for people with intellectual disabilities. However, this protection is unevenly applied, because the state often fights to execute people by pointing to a specific IQ score that is slightly above the state’s cutoff — attempting to apply a “bright line” standard when a range of IQ scores and information about daily function are far more accurate in determining intellectual disability. This practice means that many people with clear disabilities still face execution in North Carolina.

There are even fewer protections for those with mental illness. There is no law preventing people with even the most severe mental illness from being tried capitally. Some people sentenced to death in North Carolina have schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders that cause delusions and hallucinations. Some have severe post-traumatic stress disorder, either because they are war veterans or suffered horrific childhood trauma. They did not have fair trials because their illness made it impossible for them to cooperate with their lawyers or make rational decisions.

A death penalty that preys on the most vulnerable people in our society makes a mockery of justice.

Right now in North Carolina:

  • Intellectual disabilities and mental illness make people more susceptible to police pressure to confess, even when they are innocent.
  • Intellectual disability is often harder for people of color to prove, because many attended under-resourced schools and were never evaluated as children.
  • Mental illness does not make people more likely to commit murder, but it does make them more likely to receive unfair trials and be sentenced to death.
  • Mental illness has led some people to fire their attorneys and represent themselves at capital trials, even while in the grips of delusions.

Stories

Case File: Timothy Richardson

Confession coerced from a man who functions at the level of a 12-year-old

Timothy Richardson’s confession isn’t recorded or signed and would be illegal today. Other evidence has been destroyed. He remains on death row.
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Case File: James Davis

A combat veteran with severe PTSD receives no mercy

James Davis endured two brutal combat tours in Vietnam, severe childhood abuse, and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Virtually no evidence of his mental illness was presented at trial.
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Case File: Guy LeGrande

Delusional and hearing voices, he represented himself at a capital trial

Guy LeGrande believed celebrities were sending him messages through the television. He called his jurors “antichrists” and told them to “pull the damn switch and shake that groove thing.”
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Case File: Frank Chambers

An abused and disabled child is portrayed as a criminal “mastermind”

A lifetime of evidence of intellectual disability has not been enough to get Frank Chambers removed from death row, despite laws that should protect him from execution.
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Case File: Allen Holman

Even the prosecutor believed he didn’t deserve execution

Despite his mental illness, extreme remorse and willingness to take responsibility, an outdated state law forced the state to seek the death penalty against Allen Holman.
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