Death Penalty Based on (Fluctuating) IQ

This from my favorite new blog, Mind Hacks.

The BBC are reporting that convicted murderer Daryl Atkins may be executed by the state of Virginia, based on a recent IQ test where he scored 74, four points above the legal definition of retardation, which had previously excluded him from the death penalty.

This is of personal interest to me because Arthur Faulkner, the man who was convicted of murdering my friend, Clarice Dorner (and another woman, Annaliese Killoran), had his death sentence changed to life without parole, based on the Supreme Court decision, Atkins v. Virginia which ruled that "Executions of mentally retarded criminals are "cruel and unusual punishments" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment."

After Clarice died, I remember saying "I've always been against the death penalty, but I think this guy should fry."  Ever since then, it's been difficult to separate feelings about my personal loss from my bleeding heart instincts and intellectual knowledge about the inequitable administration of the death penalty.  Her death served to release some base and Old Testament instincts that I carry and which still surprise and horrify me to this day, more than fifteen years later.  I still have enough conflict about it, that I probably should go re-read Steven J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.

Comments

[Lisa Small]

I've sent you a private note about Clarice.

[Matthew]

To answer your question, no I probably would not use it if it were my life in jeopardy...assuming it were only my life. (It's the Catholic happy death thing- I figure once I'm gone from here it only gets better!)

If it were someone else's life... an innocent life I would be more likely to use it, and I can fathom some cases where I would consider myself required to use it to defend schoolchildren or some such horrible thought.

However the use of my gun is always a last resort. The first thing to do would be run away and hide. Failing that I'd try anything else first, but running and hiding beats shooting any day.

When I was a police officer (for all 9 months) I was asked if I could shoot someone and I said yes, it would be my job. I felt the same way about the death penalty then as I do now, but shooting the bad guy robbing an Arbys and executing someone decades later although they both are just as dead are remarkably different.

[rochelle]

That's a lot of Latin, there Matt, but I think I get your gist. ;-) And, really I do agree with you, especially when you see the capricious administration of "justice" like this. Today, we can kill him. Tomorrow we can't?

I don't mean to bait you, but I do have a question for you. I know that you have a gun for self-defense, but would you use it, and kill a person were your life in jeopardy? I remember a HS teacher who said that she didn't think she could kill anyone, except, perhaps, in her daughter's defense, even if her own life was at risk. I'm not sure it's a question I can answer myself.

[Matthew]

Well, they decided that he was not retarted enough to not kill.

Why people think killing people is OK is really beyond me. Why we bitch and moan when the tent people lop off a head when we do the same thing but wear suits and spout off about res ipsa loquitor confuses me.

Be the bigger person, don't kill people ex post facto.