In my opinion, people who have mental retardation should not be executed for the crimes that they are accused of. There are many reasons for my answer.

By definition capital punishment is an execution of a criminal who is convicted of a crime, otherwise known as punishment by death. It can be carried out in various different ways: lethal injection, electrocution and gas chamber, only to name a few. By definition mental retardation is a lifelong condition of impaired or incomplete mental development. A person is considered to be mentally retarded if he or she has the following three specific characteristics.

The first characteristic is a significantly sub average intellectual functioning, or an intellectual functioning level (IQ) below 75 . The average IQ in the United States is considered to be a 100; therefore an IQ of 75 and below is significantly below the average American IQ. For a grown adult to have an IQ of 75 or below is equivalent to that of a child in the third grade.

The second characteristic that defines a person who is mentally retarded is a concurrent and related limitation in two or more adaptive skill areas. This means that a person with mental ret

Billy Dwayne White was a teenage boy with mental retardation. He started hanging out with older guys in his neighborhood. They taught him to steal and do things that were wrong. They got him to do these things by telling him that he was a coward unless he did them. He wanted to please his friends so he would commit the crimes. He was very easily misled.

A man named David Vasquez confessed to a crime that he didn't commit. The police made him believe that he hanged a woman with a clothesline, so he confessed. He was charged with capital punishment in February of 1984. In 1989 he was pardoned when they found the real murderer.

People who have mental retardation strive to please people who are smarter than they are. Often mentally retarded people who are on trial admit to crimes that they did not commit. They do this because they thing they're telling their interrogator what they want to hear or because they think they're giving the "right" answer. If police tell them that they have done something, they think they did when, in fact, they didn't do anything at all. They believe whatever the police say because they think that it's true.

The police convinced Earl Washington, a man who was on trial for the rape and murder of a woman in Virginia in 1982 that he had committed the crime. Police made this man believe that he had murdered the victim. Sixteen years later police found the real murderer due to DNA tests.

A man who had an IQ of 66 in Virginia was executed after being convicted of rape and murder. Before he was executed he asked his lega

Some common words found in the essay are:
American IQ, Wayne Sawyer, Earl Washington, Mentally Retarded, Dwayne White, David Vasquez, mental retardation, IQ United, mentally retarded, capital punishment, people mental, people mental retardation, person mental, person mental retardation, breath leaves body, leaves body, crimes commit, found real murderer, police believe, breath leaves, iq 75 below, real murderer,
Approximate Word count = 1063
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)