Mentally Disabled People Treated In Court Cases Essay

How are the mentally disabled treated in court cases trails? To answer this question, I found two articles that relate to this topic. One of the two articles entitled “In the public Interest: Intellectual Disability, the Supreme Court, and the Death Penalty” targets a specific death penalty court case where the attorney for the defendant did not effectively provide evidence to show that the defendant was viewed as mentally disabled according to the law. This topic is relevant to my topic because it shows how careless attorneys are when fighting for a mentally disabled person’s life. The second article “Reforming Incompetency to stand trial and plead guilty” discuss the issue of the importance of reforming he incompetency doctrine. This topic is relevant to the question at hand, because the doctrine allows people who a mentally disabled to be protected in law. These two sources are alike in many ways, one being they both want to protect the rights of a mentally disabled people. Although they have a similar objective they go about obtaining it in different ways. The first article wants to show misrepresentation by the attorney of a specific case to show that if an attorney has any doubt that the person is mentally ill then they need to be evaluated for treatment, because according to the law any mentally disabled person

I would use these two articles because one states what the law has already put in place, but needs some revising, therefore it points out the flaws in our court system. The other article is useful, because it highlights the flaws in the training and effectiveness of attorneys when it comes down to dealing with mentally disabled clients. In order to completely answer this research question, I need to find out how judges and prosecutors treat mentally disabled defendant. I also need to research what defines someone as being mentally disabled according to the