CHARACTERISTICS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF MENTAL RETARDATION

Although mental retardation of any degree has profound implications for a person’s cognitive and social development, it is a condition which in many cases is not readily apparent. Which some of the mentally retarded, such as those whose retardation is caused by Down’s syndrome or fetal alcohol syndrome, have characteristically distinctive facial features, most cannot be identified by their physical appearance alone. Unless their cognitive impairment is unusually severe (e.g. an I.Q. below 40), persons with mental retardation may be thought of as slow but the full extent of their impairment is often not readily appreciated. Particularly by people who have limited contact with or knowledge of them, including police, prosecutors, judges, and other participants in the criminal justice system. Many capital offenders with mental retardation did not have their condition diagnosed until trial or during post-conviction proceedings.

A person with mental retardation, according to one expert, “is always the least smart person in any group. This leads to fear, dependence and an experience of terrible stigma and devaluation.” Since mentally retarded people are often ashamed of their own retardation, they may go to great lengths to hide their retardation, fooling those with no expertise in the subject. They may wrap themselves in a “cloak of competence” hiding their disability even from those who want to help them, including their lawyers. Overworked or incompetent lawyers may overlook evidence of retardation and fail to request a psychological evaluation or rise during trail. At times, even competent lawyers who are anxious to help their clients may fail to identify their clients’ retardation or may be unable to access funds for a physiological evaluation.

Oliver Cruz, who was executed in Texas on August 9, 2000, had an I.Q. that was measured variously at 64 and 76. Cruz nonetheless insisted to reporters that, although he was perhaps “slow in reading, slow in learning,” he was not mentally retarded.

 Mitigation specialist Scharlette Holdman recalled a client who so successfully hid his retardation from his attorneys that he allowed them to sign him up for college – level calculus classes, which he could not comprehend. He had gone through much of his schooling allowing his younger sister to complete his homework for him. When he was given papers to read in connection to his case, he would carefully stare at them. If he was asked a substantive question, he usually responded, “I don’t recall.” Only when experts in retardation evaluated him and investigators reviewed his school records and spoke to his family did lawyers discover he had mental retardation and had been considered “slow” since his early childhood.

Another capital defendant “hid his mental retardation for most of his life by working at a very repetitive job as a switcher on the railroad. He lied about finishing high school. He was actually in special education classes and is not finish the sixth grade. He was drafted into the army and discharged because of his mental retardation. He lied about his service record. He often made things up so that people would not suspect mental retardation.”

The fact that many people with mental retardation can and do live relatively “normal” lives with their families or in the community, coupled with the fact that most of them do not look different from people with average intellectual capabilities, can make it difficult for the public to appreciate the significance of their condition. But, as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan noted, “Every individual who has mental retardation’—irrespective of his or her precise capabilities or experiences – has a substantial disability in cognitive ability and adaptive behavior.” Like all human beings, people with mental retardation deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and deserve the chance to live lives that are as normal as possible – but they also require special acknowledgment of their vulnerabilities and their mental Incaabilities.

A person with mental retardation will have limitations of a greater or lesser extent in every aspect of cognitive functioning. He or she will have limited abilities to learn (including reading, writing and arithmetic) and to reason, plan, understand, judge, and discriminate. Mental Retardation truncates the capacity to think about intended actions, to consider their possible consequences, and to exercise restraint. One expert has summarized the attributes of mental retardation as follows:

Almost uniformly, individuals with mental retardation have grave difficulties in language and communication. They have problems with attention, memory. Intellectual rigidity, and in moral development or moral understanding. They are susceptible to suggestion and readily acquiesce to other adults or authority figures… People with mental retardation have limited knowledge because their impaired intelligence has prevented them from learning very much. They also have grave problems in logic, foresight, planning, strategic thinking, and understanding consequences.

Many of these limitations, of course, characterize children. But while children will outgrow these limitations as their brains develop and mature people with mental retardation will not.

In limitations a person’s cognitive development and ability to learn, mental retardation also limits the ability to understand abstract concepts, including moral concepts. While most defendants with mental retardation who have committed a crime know they have done something wrong, they often cannot explain why the act was wrong.

At the trial of a man with mental retardation convicted of raping and murdering and 87-year old woman, a clinical psychologist testified that while the defendant could acknowledge that rape was “wrong,” he was nonetheless not able to offer any explanation for why. “Pressed for an answer, [the defendant] admitted not receiving ‘permission’ for the rape…..Pressed further, in desperation, he blurted out, Maybe it’s against her religion!’ The jury gasped at such an explanation.

The inability to comprehend abstract concepts may include the inability to fully understand the meaning of “death” or “murder”.

Morris Mason, whose I.Q. was 62-66 was executed in 1985 in Virginia after being convicted of rape and murder. Before his execution, Mason asked one of his legal advisors for advice on what to wear to his funeral.

Robert Wayne Sawyer, who had mental retardation, was convicted of beating, raping, and burning alive a young woman in 1979. At his clemency hearing, the chair of the Louisiana pardons board asked Sawyer if he knew what murder was. Sawyer responded, “That when the breath leaves your body.” In response to a subsequent question he clarified that “it’s when you stab someone and the breath leaves the body.” When he was then asked what happens if someone is shot, Sawyer answered, “I just don’t know.”

Since they often face abuse, taunts, and rejection because of their low intelligence, people with mental retardation can be desperate for approval and friendship. Eager to be accepted and eager to please, people with mental retardation are characteristically highly suggestible.

Earl Washington, whose mental retardation was diagnosed when he was a child, confessed during long police interrogations to a murder that he did not commit. Washington was so suggestible and eager to please, according to a former employer, that “you could get [him] to confess that he walked on the moon” In an effort to show the invalidity of Washington’s confession because of his mental deficiencies, his trail lawyer would “pick a day, any day, and tell Washington that day was [his] birth date….after prodding and cajoling, Washington would accept the false date.”

As one psychiatrist testified about a capital defendant with an I.Q. of between 35 to 45: “[People with mental retardation try] to go along with people that they suspect are in authority. For example, I asked him if we were in Atlanta and he said yes, ‘we are in Atlanta.’ In fact, we were in Birmingham, Alabama. I could have said New York and he would have said ‘Sure, New York”……

Low intelligence and limited adaptive skills also mean that people with mental retardation often miss social “cues” that other adults understand. Their inappropriate social responses can be misinterpreted by people who do not know they have mental retardation or who do not understand the nature of retardation.

They may act in ways that seem suspicious, even when they have done nothing wrong. When questioned by police or other authority figures, they often smile inappropriately, fail to remain still when ordered to do so, or act agitated and furtive when they should be calm and polite. Others may fall asleep at the wrong moment.

Hebert Welcome was convicted of murdering his aunt and her boyfriend in 1981 in Louisiana. Welcome has mental retardation and, according to psychiatric testimony presented at his trial, has a mental age of eight. He smiled incessantly during his capital murder trail and almost involuntary defense mechanism developed in response to a lifetime of taunts. As his defense attorney noted, “Many people with retardation smile a lot… They are anxious for approval, and have learned that smiling is one way to get [it]. But they don’t have the judgment to know when to smile.” The prosecutor argued that Welcome’s smiles showed that he lacked remorse for his crimes. He was sentenced to death and remains today on death row.

Both Barry Lee Fairchild, capital trials—eloquent evidence of the failure of these two men with mental retardation to appreciate the significance of the criminal proceeding against them. Trail counsel was not aware that they had mental retardation. But their tendency to sleep peacefully during their trials helped alert post-conviction lawyers to their mental disability. In the case of white, who snored loudly during the penalty phase of his trial, the prosecutor argued that his conduct indicated his lack of remorse for his crime and his lack of respect for the criminal justice system. Both Fairchild and White were sentenced to death and executed.