Agencies sign brief opposing execution of mentally disabled
6/21/2001
WASHINGTON (UMNS) - Two agencies of the United Methodist Church have joined other religious organizations in filing a document with the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the death penalty for mentally disabled people.
The boards of Church and Society, based in Washington, and Global Ministries, based in New York, have filed an "amicus" - or friend of the court - brief in the case of Ernest Paul McCarver v. State of North Carolina. The court is expected to hear the case after it returns from recess Oct. 1.
Arguments in the brief focus on whether the execution of a mentally retarded man would violate constitutional prohibitions of cruel and unusual punishment.
In the 1989 case Penry v. Lynaugh, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that executing convicted mentally retarded individuals did not violate the Eighth and 14th Amendments. At that time, only Georgia and the federal government prohibited the execution of mentally disabled people.
In the intervening years, 12 additional states have enacted such legislation. They are Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and, very recently, Maryland. In addition, 12 states and the District of Columbia prohibit the death penalty for everyone.
The court will hear arguments in the case of McCarver v. North Carolina this fall.
The two United Methodist agencies joined the case on the side of McCarver because it involves both the death penalty, which the church has opposed for decades, and mental disability. In the church's Social Principles, the denomination's General Conference says, "We oppose capital punishment and urge its elimination from all criminal codes." The church also has a resolution that opposes abusive treatment of people with mental disabilities.
The organizations that co-signed the brief are not of like mind regarding the death penalty in general. Despite their differing views, their brief states that they "share a conviction that the execution of persons with mental retardation cannot be morally justified. In our view, based on our vision of how a just society should act, such an execution violates the standards of decency of American society and the Eighth Amendment guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment."
Besides the United Methodist groups, representatives of a dozen other organizations co-signed the brief, including three Jewish groups; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the United Church of Christ; the Presbyterian Church; the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United States Catholic Conference
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