The country’s death penalty system is overrun with issues of severe mental illness. This is a growing problem and results in a system that targets the most vulnerable, not the “worst of the worst” as many falsely believe.
You can watch a live screening of the short film, “Too Ill to Execute” on Monday, February 11th at 7:00 pm CT. Simply go to www.tasmie.org/tooilltoexecute/.
CCATDP’s National Manager, Hannah Cox, joined the organization’s State Coordinator for Tennessee, Amy Lawrence, in calling on Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to act swiftly yesterday.
In an open letter posted in the Commercial Appeal, they implored Tennessee’s Governor to commute the sentence of a man with severe mental illness scheduled for an execution this coming Thursday. The execution would be the state’s first in nearly ten years and only its seventh since reinstatement in 1976. The state has exonerated four people during that same time period over innocence issues.
The man, Billy Ray Irick, was institutionalized at the age of eight and grew up in an orphanage for the majority of his childhood. Despite numerous witnesses who attested to his psychotic break at the time of the crime, his illness was never brought up at trial.
You can read the full letter here.
