Did the Execution of Cecil Clayton Violate the 8th Amendment?

Cecil Clayton, 74, was killed by lethal injection Tuesday night at a Missouri prison. He was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1996, and was given the death penalty by the jury. This case may seem like a typical “murderer gets put on death row” scenario, but Clayton is an exception. It’s possible the Missouri Supreme Court violated his fundamental right of protection from cruel and unusual punishment due to his mental condition.

In 1972, when Clayton was 32, he suffered from an extremely serious work accident. He was working on a sawmill when a piece of wood shot out and impaled him in his skull. In order for the doctors to remove the piece of wood, they also had to remove 20% of his brain. The part they extracted was from the frontal lobe, which controls impulse control, basic judgment, memory, social behavior, and other important function.

Before the accident, Clayton was a happy, sober, married man, who was a hard worker with a clean record. After the accident, he was diagnosed with chronic brain syndrome, paranoia, schizophrenia, and depression.

Last month, a psychiatrist evaluated Clayton and deemed him incompetent to be eligible for execution due to his mental state. His lawyers made many attempts to halt the execution, even bringing the case to the Supreme Court. But in a 4 to 3 vote, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that Clayton did not meet the requirements to be considered incompetent and therefore an execution was lawful.

According to the Eighth Amendment, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. In 2002, the case Atkins v Virginia determined that death to a mentally disabled person was unconstitutional. Executing an inmate who is intellectually disabled directly violates the Eighth Amendment. An inmate must be aware of their impending death, and fully understand why they are being executed.

Clayton was neither aware nor understood. He not only suffers from the mental illnesses described above, but he is also intellectually disabled; having an IQ of only 71. This qualifies Clayton as mentally disabled and he should not have been executed due to his fundamental protection from cruel and unusual punishment.