Mental Illness In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The Death penalty relates heavily with mentally ill offenders and furthers the idea of its injustice and immorality through the M’Naghten Rule. The National Mental Health Association concludes that as many as 370 offenders with severe mental illness are awaiting execution —up to 1 of every 10 prisoners on death row. The justice system does not adequately address cases involving criminal defendants with mental illness. (Silverstein 28).Capote understands the connection between capital punishment and mental illness. Constantly within the novel, the mental illnesses of Perry and Dick are made present and the immorality of capital punishment as well. In the novel, "Perry exclaims, ‘I think there must be something wrong with us,’ he was making

His mother, an alcoholic, had strangled to death on her own vomit. Of her children, two sons and two daughters, only the younger girl, Barbara, had entered ordinary life, married, begun raising a family. Fern, the other daughter, jumped out of a window of a San Francisco hotel" (Capote, In Cold Blood 110). Perry's childhood was very traumatic and Capote constantly mentions it within the novel to show that this caused him to murder the Clutter family. Capote understood the severity of Perry’s mental illness and used his novel to connection mental illness with the immorality and injustice of capital punishment. The M'Naghten Rule states that the only proof of insanity is if a person is unable to distinguish between right and wrong at the time they commit a crime. Under this law, many mental insane people are classified as sane because they show no physical prominent issues. (Capote, Conversations 129-130)The M'Naghten rule plays a giant role in the novel In Cold Blood. A doctor is put on the stand during the trial of Dick and Perry to testify regarding their mental illnesses. The novel states, " It was hopeless because though Dr.Jones agreed to elaborate, the prosecution was entitled to object -- and did, citing the fact that Kansas law allowed nothing more than a yes or no reply to that pertinent

The title of Capote's novel, In Cold Blood, not only refers to the Clutter family murders but also refers to cold-blooded Kansas in their capital punishment conviction of Hickcock and Smith in retribution for their crime (Voss 156). Capote, influenced by his anti-death penalty stance, incorporated his view within the novel to make it an argument again Capital Punishment. He titled the novel in regards to his opinion and also exhibits his viewpoint of the coldness of the death penalty throughout the novel. In the novel, Perry states, “Those prairiebillys, they’ll vote to hang fast as pigs eat slop. Look at their eyes. I’ll be damned if I’m the only killer in the courtroom” (Capote, In Cold Blood 289). Perry believes the citizens of Kansas to be very cold and hints at the fact that they too are taking lives, the lives of the clutter killers for retribution of the crime. Capote includes this within his text and his title to hint at the immorality of the death penalty.It is very rare for people to have a professional homicidal mind meaning they have no feelings for human life. On death row, most men are emotional criminals that belong in a hospital rather than in a prison. They kill in a moment's