07 December 2020 :
DPIC Analysis: Intellectually Disabled Defendants of Color, Foreign Nationals Disproportionately Subject to the Death Penalty.
Defendants of color and foreign nationals who are intellectually disabled are disproportionately likely to be sentenced to death, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of cases involving intellectually disabled defendants suggests.
The review of more than 130 cases involving defendants whose death sentences have been overturned because of the constitutional prohibition against executing persons with intellectual disability found that more than 80% of intellectually disabled defendants sentenced to death are persons of color. Two-thirds of the intellectually disabled defendants sentenced to death are African American (87, or 66.4%); 19.1% (25) are white; 13.7% (18) are Latinx; and one (0.8%) is Asian. Eleven (8.4%) are foreign nationals.
DPIC Executive Robert Dunham, who conducted the analysis, said “the numbers further confirm what researchers have repeatedly documented in other contexts: that vulnerable defendants who belong to communities that have historically been discriminated against by the criminal legal system face an elevated risk of being wrongfully sentenced to death. The findings are especially significant now, as the federal government and several states are rushing to execute a number of intellectually disabled Black men without affording them meaningful judicial review of legal claims that, if proven, would require their death sentences to be vacated.”
