That’s the claim of Lane Wallace in The Atlantic, where she uses it in support of her argument that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

But if, in fact, murderers who commit grisly crimes do so because of warped minds–perhaps because of trauma and abuse endured as children, or perhaps because of organic, biological deficits–if, in fact, they are mentally ill in ways that make it impossible for them to see the world or appropriate boundaries and behaviors the way the rest of us do. Is it appropriate, ethical, or right to kill them for their acts? Or is it, as Sharp argues, a barbaric thing for a civilized society to do? 

Or, to put it in Constitutional terms, if someone’s acts are a result of an illness they can’t control, even if the acts are deliberate, conscious and cold-blooded, does it violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment to condemn them to death because of those acts?

She arrives there on the back of a criminal defense lawyer, Elaine Whitfield Sharp.

Elaine Whitfield Sharp is a defense attorney who has worked on hundreds of murder cases over the past 20 years. And while she thinks Stevens’ points are valid, she believes the fundamental problem with capital punishment is more basic than that. 

“You see, I truly believe that murderers are mentally ill,” she explains. “Their brains don’t work like the rest of ours do. To deliberately kill someone requires crossing a profound boundary. Most of us couldn’t do it. We couldn’t even think about it. But they can. They do. Why? Because they’re mentally ill. And fundamentally, as a society, I believe it is barbaric to kill people who are ill.” 

While it’s useful, maybe even necessary, when arguing against the imposition of the death penalty as a concept across the board to make such sweeping claims, it’s similarly problematic when one considers that the vast majority of those convicted of murder, in one of its permutations, will not be sentenced to death, and will in fact be sentenced to a term of years and subsequently released.  Yet, this anecdotal argument, based on the experience of one lawyer, untrained in the assessment of mental illness, is the sort of thing that is used to impugn everyone convicted of murder.

So, in many ways, or until a crisis precipitates a dysfunctional episode, a mentally ill person can appear perfectly rational and “normal.” And yet, their internal world is very different. What is irrational or unreasonable to most of us can seem very reasonable to them. 

“Murderers seem to have no appreciation of boundaries,” Sharp explains. “And it shows up in all aspects of their lives. Most criminals I deal with are very narcissistic. They’re blame-shifters, manipulative, and can’t feel anyone else’s pain but their own. A consistent hallmark, in fact, particularly of killers, is this extreme narcissism.”

This may well be a valid description of some, perhaps many, who kill.  But all?  Is this a universal truism?  It has to be if the position is going to serve any utility in arguing against capital punishment, but it’s similarly an argument against ever releasing a person convicted of murder back into society. 

This would serve as an excellent basis to impose life in prison instead of a term of years that would eventually result in release.  After all, they may have served their sentence, but they will still be mentally ill.  wouldn’t it be dangerous, irresponsible, to let such a narcissist free to experience another precipitating crisis and murder again?

Most of us would view someone who’s constantly shifting blame to others and has an aggrandized view of themselves as annoying, at best, and perhaps reprehensible. But what Sharp, Peck and others are arguing is that, at least after a certain point on the spectrum, it’s actually a mental disorder, like schizophrenia or other personality disorders. As in, not something the person can control or change on their own.

Worse still, if murderous conduct is something that these narcissists can neither control nor change, minimal prudence would suggest screening for such conduct as constant blame shifting in order to identify those who suffer from this amorphous mental disorder and remove them from society before they can kill.  We certainly don’t want these ticking time bombs, killing machines, walking the streets, just waiting for some event to pop something in their heads and make them murder babies.

The problem with arguments like these, aside from their being a bit facile and unsupported, is that they paint with a very broad brush in order to serve their intended purpose, in this case to argue the wrongfulness of executing a person who is mentally ill and incapable of controlling their conduct due to “trauma and abuse endured as children, or perhaps because of organic, biological deficits.”  Certainly, they can’t be held morally responsible for their acts.  It’s not a bad argument.

But the extension of the argument, that anyone convicted of the crime of murder can never be safely released, can never pay his dues and return to society as a law-abiding member, who must be incarcerated forever, can’t be ignored.  While the death penalty is clearly the most extreme consequence, and hence one that we tend to focus on with far greater concern and scrutiny than any other, the punishment remains one that is rarely imposed. 

To say that killers are mentally ill due to a narcissistic world view isn’t a great stretch.  Indeed, many people who commit crime suffer from this mindset, putting their own self-interest above that of others, that of society.  Some might say this is a trait of lawyers as well, and it goes without saying that it’s a definitional component of the Slackoisie.

Are we all potential killers, just waiting for that precipitating event to make us lose it?  Could it be that simple?  But then it wouldn’t be a mental deficit, but an aspect of flawed humanity that changes an otherwise normal person, whatever that is, into a raging murderer.

The capital punishment debate is a real and serious one, but as Jeff Gamso often reminds us, life in prison is just a variation on a theme, where death is imposed but takes a little longer to carry out.  In solving one problem, we must remain vigilant against promoting another.

Sweeping simplistic claims, like Wallace’s, may serve to support the argument against capital punishment, and to the extent that one focuses exclusively on that wrong, it’s easy to get behind.  But our inclination to support arguments that further one goal without consideration of their unintended, or maybe just unconsidered, consequences is the sort of thing that can cause far-reaching problems for many others. 

In the quest to stop executions, do we really want to argue that all murderers are mentally ill?  Sure, that diminishes their responsibility for their crime, but it also means they should never walk out of prison alive.  Is it really an advancement to substitute the fast death penalty for the slow one?