Abstract
The relationship between mental health law and criminal law is disturbing in both its substance and its scope. If it is true that the task of lawyering is that of enabling the client to have his story told, it is certainly true that nowhere are clients' stories more complex than in the intersection between criminal law and mental health law. This Article involves one such intersection: the relationship between mental retardation and capital punishment. Johnny Paul Penry is a convicted rapist and murderer on death row in Texas. He is a survivor of long-term child abuse and organic brain damage who exhibits the intellectual functioning of a seven-year-old child. This article will focus on Penry's case after the first Supreme Court decision in 1989.
Recommended Citation
Hall, Timothy S.
(2002)
"Legal Fictions and Moral Reasoning: Capital Punishment and the Mentally Retarded Defendant After Penry v. Johnson,"
Akron Law Review: Vol. 35:
Iss.
3, Article 1.
Available at:
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/akronlawreview/vol35/iss3/1