REPORT OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION’S TASK FORCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE DEATH PENALTY
August 5, 2004

PREAMBLE

	In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the United States Supreme Court held that execution of people with mental retardation violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.   The Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the American Bar Association recognized that Atkins offered a timely opportunity to consider the extent, if any, to which other types of impaired mental conditions ought to lead to exemption from the death penalty.  To carry out that objective, the Section established a Task Force on Mental Illness and the Death Penalty, which deliberated from April, 2003 through August, 2004. 

The Task Force, composed of thirty-four lawyers and mental health professionals  (including both practitioners and academics),* recommends that the American Bar Association adopt three Resolutions, set out below.  In brief, the Resolutions call for exemption from the death penalty of three groups of people:  (1) offenders with mental retardation, as required by Atkins, as well as offenders who are similarly intellectually impaired because of other types of persistent mental disabilities; (2) offenders who are cognitively or volitionally impaired at the time of the offense because of severe mental illness, such as psychosis; and (3) offenders who, once convicted and sentenced, become incompetent to be executed due to mental disorder.  Individuals in the first two groups are substantially less culpable than other criminal offenders, and thus should not be eligible for the death penalty.  Individuals in the third group might also fall in one of the first two groups, but in any event should not be executed given their impaired ability to assist counsel and appreciate their punishment and the difficult ethical issues associated with restoring them to competency.

RESOLUTION 1:

Persistent Mental Disability:  Defendants shall not be executed or sentenced to death if they have a persistent mental disability, with onset before the offense, characterized by significant limitations in both their intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills.

Commentary:  This Resolution exempts from the death penalty those charged with capital offenses who have significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and adaptive skills. The primary purpose of this Resolution is to implement the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Atkins v. Virginia.  While the Court clearly prohibited execution of people with mental retardation, it did not define that term. The Resolution embraces the language of the most recent edition of the Manual of the American Association of Mental Retardation (10th ed., 2002), which defines mental retardation as a disability, originating before the age of 18, “characterized by significant limitations both on intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills.” Id. at 13. The language of the Resolution is also consistent with the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR, 2000), which defines a person as mentally retarded if, before the age of 18,he or she exhibits “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning (an IQ of approximately 70 or below)” and “concurrent deficits or impairments in present adaptive functioning . . . in at least two of the following areas: communication, self-care, home living, social/interpersonal skills, use of community resources, self-direction, functional academic skills, work, leisure, health, and safety.”  Id. at 46.  For further elaboration on how mental retardation should be defined and assessed in the capital sentencing context, see James W. Ellis, Mental Retardation and the Death Penalty: A Guide to State Legislative Issues, 27 Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter 11-24 (2003) and Richard J. Bonnie, The American Psychiatric Association’s Resource Document on Mental Retardation and Capital Sentencing: Implementing Atkins v. Virginia, __ Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law __ (2004).

The language in this Resolution is also meant to encompass other types of “persistent” disabilities aside from mental retardation.  The disability need not be congenital or manifest itself before age 18, as is required for a diagnosis of mental retardation, but instead may result from head trauma, the aging process or other causes, as long as it is persistent, in the sense of being irreversible, and is manifested before the offense.  For instance, dementia is often untreatable and is associated with a number of deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning, such as agnosia (failure to recognize or identify objects) and disturbances in executive functioning connected with planning, organizing, sequencing, and abstracting.  See DSM-IV-TR, at 135 (describing symptoms of dementia).  People with dementia or a traumatic head injury severe enough to result in “significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior” rarely commit capital offenses. However, because these severe disabilities are morally and legally equivalent to mental retardation, they should also be exempted from execution under the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Atkins.

RESOLUTION 2:
Mental Disorder or Disability at the Time of the Offense:  Defendants shall not be executed or sentenced to death if, at the time of the offense, they had a severe mental disorder or disability that significantly impaired their capacity (a) to appreciate the nature, consequences or wrongfulness of their conduct, (b) to exercise rational judgment in relation to conduct, or (c) to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law.  A disorder manifested primarily by repeated criminal conduct or attributable solely to the acute effects of alcohol or other drugs does not, standing alone, constitute a mental disorder or disability for purposes of this provision. 

Commentary:   This Resolution is meant to prohibit execution of persons with severe mental disabilities other than mental retardation and related disorders whose impairments of mental and emotional functioning at the time of the offense would render a death sentence disproportionate to their culpability The Resolution uses the phrase “disorder or disability” to make clear that even those conditions that are not included in the APA’s Manual of Mental Disorders can lead to exemption from the death penalty if it causes the indicated impairments.  However, the Resolution also indicates that only those individuals with “severe” disorders or disabilities would be exempted from the death penalty, and specifically excludes from that category those diagnosed with conditions that are primarily manifested by criminal behavior and those whose abuse of psychoactive substances renders them temporarily impaired at the time of the offense. As with the offenders described in Resolution 1, offenders who come under coverage of this Resolution are not excused for their conduct. Rather, they would be exempted from the death penalty and sentenced to the alternative punishment provided by law.  In most states, that punishment would be a life sentence.  

The rationale for this Resolution flows from long-established principles of Anglo-American law that the United States Supreme Court recognized and embraced in Atkins v. Virginia.  In Atkins, the Court concluded that execution of people with retardation was inconsistent with both the retributive and deterrent functions of the death penalty.  More specifically, it held that people with retardation are both less culpable and less deterrable than the average murderer, because of their “diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others.”  Id. at 318.   As the Court noted, “[i]f the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution.” Id. at 319.  Similarly, with respect to deterrence, the Court stated, “[e]xempting the mentally retarded from [the death penalty] will not affect the ‘cold calculus that precedes the decision’ of other potential murderers.”  Id. 

The same reasoning applies to people who, in the words of the Resolution, have a “severe disorder or disability” that, at the time of the offense: (1) “significantly impaired their capacity to appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of their conduct;” (2) “significantly impaired their capacity to exercise rational judgment in relation to the conduct;” or (3) “significantly impaired their capacity to conform their conduct to the requirements of law.”  Offenders who meet these requirements are clearly not as culpable or deterrable as the average offender.   See Christopher Slobogin, What Atkins Could Mean for People with Mental Illness, 33 N. Mex. L. Rev. 293, 303-312 (2003).

First, the predicate for all three types of impairment to which this Resolution refers is that they have a “severe” disorder or disability, which is meant to signify a disorder that is roughly equivalent to disorders mental health professionals would consider the most serious “Axis I diagnoses.”   See DSM-IV-TR, at 25-26.  These disorders include schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, mania, major depressive disorder, and dissociative disorders, with schizophrenia being by far the most common disorder seen in capital defendants.  In their acute state, all of these disorders are typically associated with delusions (fixed, clearly false beliefs), hallucinations (clearly erroneous perceptions of reality), extremely disorganized thinking, or very significant disruption of consciousness, memory and perception of the environment.  See DSM-IV-TR, at 275-76 (schizophrenia); 301 (delusional disorders); 333 (manic-depressive psychosis); 125 (delirium); 477 (dissociative disorders).  Some conditions that are not considered an Axis I condition might also rarely become “severe” as that word is used in the Resolution. For instance, some persons whose predominant diagnosis is a personality disorder, which is an Axis II disorder, may at times experience more significant dysfunction.  Thus, people with borderline personality disorder can experience “psychotic-like symptoms . . . during times of stress.”  See DSM-IV-TR, at 652.  However, only if these more serious symptoms occur at the time of the capital offense would the predicate for this Resolution be present.  

Conditions of this severity significantly compromise an individual’s ability to perceive reality and control behavior.  To ensure that the exemption only applies to offenders who are substantially less culpable and less deterrable than the average murderer, the Resolution further requires that the disorder significantly impair cognitive or volitional functioning at the time of the offense. Atkins held that the death penalty is excessive for every person with mental retardation, and the Supreme Court therefore dispensed with a case-by-case assessment of responsibility.  Although other severe mental disabilities can also have a profound bearing on responsibility, preclusion of a death sentence based on diagnosis alone would not be sensible for these disorders, given their variability. 

It should be emphasized that many offenders who meet the test set out in the Resolution should not be convicted of capital murder in the first place, but instead should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Indeed, the specific language describing the type of cognitive and volitional impairment that would exempt a severely disordered individual from the death penalty under this Resolution is very similar to the test for insanity found in the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code (MPC), once the dominant insanity formulation for insanity and still used in roughly one-quarter of American jurisdictions.  However, the Resolution is designed to set out a coherent definition of “diminished responsibility” that should be adopted in every death penalty state, regardless of the particular test that the state uses to negate responsibility altogether.

It also must be recognized that many jurisdictions do not follow the Model Penal Code test for insanity, but rather have adopted a more restrictive version of it.  Thus, most jurisdictions do not recognize volitional impairment as a basis for an insanity acquittal, whereas this Resolution does (with its reference, in (c), to significant impairment in the capacity to “conform . . . conduct to the requirements of the law”).  Furthermore, some of those jurisdictions that do excuse volitional impairment rely on the “irresistible impulse” formulation, which is arguably narrower than the significant-inability-to-conform language in the Resolution.  Similarly, many jurisdictions frame the cognitive test for insanity in terms of whether the offender knew that the act was wrong, a formulation that might lead to fewer insanity acquittals than the language in the Resolution, which refers, in (a), to a significant incapacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of conduct. And some jurisdictions also seem to permit an insanity acquittal only for those severely impaired individuals who did not know or appreciate that their act was prohibited by law, whereas the language here should be interpreted, as is the analogous MPC language, to include offenders who knew their act was prohibited by law but whose mental condition caused them mistakenly to believe their crimes were nonetheless legally or morally justified. See Gary Melton et al., Psychological Evaluations for the Courts:  A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals and Lawyers 198-201 (2d ed. 1997) (describing these distinctions and the extent to which jurisdictions follow them).

Moreover, the Resolution is broader than even the MPC’s insanity language in two ways.  First, the Resolution would exempt from capital punishment not only those whose appreciation of the wrongfulness of their conduct was impaired--the focus of the MPC’s formulation--but also those who had difficulty appreciating the conduct’s  “consequences.” Many delusional offenders know that their conduct was wrongful and that they might be punished for it, but experience confusion and self-referential thinking that prevents them from recognizing its full ramifications.  For example, a person whose delusions lead him to believe that he must blow up a city's power station to prevent the Devil from infiltrating people's power lines may appreciate that it is wrong to destroy property and take the law into his own hands but not that his act will harm and perhaps even kill people who rely on the electricity.  

The second way the Resolution is broader than the MPC’s insanity language is that it encompasses, in (b), those whose severe mental disorder or disability “significantly impaired their capacity to exercise rational judgment in relation to the conduct.”  Numerous commentators have argued that irrationality is the core determinant of diminished responsibility.  See, e.g., Herbert Fingarette & Ann Fingarette Hasse, Mental Disabilities and Criminal Responsibility 218 (1979); Michael Moore, Law and Psychiatry: Rethinking the Relationship 244-245 (1985); Stephen J. Morse, Immaturity and Irresponsibility, 88 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 15, 24, (1997); Robert F. Schopp, Automatism, Insanity and the Psychology of Criminal Responsibility: A Philosophical Inquiry 215 (1991).  As used by these commentators, and as made clear in this Resolution with its threshold requirement of severe mental disability, “irrational” judgment in this context does not mean “inaccurate,” “unusual” or “bad” judgment.  Rather, it refers to the type of disoriented, incoherent and delusional thinking that only people with serious mental disability experience.  Furthermore, the Resolution requires that the irrationality occur in connection with the offense, rather than simply pre-exist the criminal conduct.  

Under these conditions, offenders who meet this part of the Resolution would often also fail to appreciate the “nature, consequences, or wrongfulness” of their conduct, and perhaps also would not be able “to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law.”  But there is a subset of severely impaired individuals who may meet neither of the latter two tests, at least as they are applied by juries, and yet who should be exempted from the death penalty because they are clearly not as culpable or deterrable as the average murderer.  For instance, a jury rejected Andrea Yates’ insanity defense despite strong evidence of psychosis at the time she drowned her five children.  Apparently, the jury believed that, despite her delusions, she could still appreciate the wrongfulness (and maybe even the fatal consequences) of her acts.  Yet that same jury spared Yates the death penalty, probably because it believed her serious mental disorder significantly impaired her ability to exercise rational judgment in relation to the conduct.

Although the Resolution is thus broader than the Model Penal Code’s insanity test, it is not as broad as the language found in the MPC’s death penalty provision describing when mental disorder is a mitigating circumstance.  First, the Resolution requires “severe” mental disorder or disability as a threshold, whereas the MPC death penalty provision does not.  Second, the Resolution requires “significant” impairment of the capacity to appreciate wrongfulness or control conduct, whereas the MPC’s death penalty provision simply requires impairment.  These differences recognize that if the impairment is not substantial, it should not automatically preclude the death penalty but at most be weighed against aggravating factors.

Furthermore, as noted above, the last sentence of the Resolution excludes from its exemption offenders whose disorder is “manifested primarily by repeated criminal conduct or attributable solely to the acute effects of alcohol or other drugs.”  The Resolution’s reference to mental disorders “manifested primarily by repeated criminal conduct” is meant to exempt from the Resolution’s effect those offenders whose only diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder or something similar.  See DSM-IV-TR, at 650 et. seq. The language is virtually identical to language in the Model Penal Code’s insanity formulation that was designed to achieve the same purpose.  See  MPC § 4.01(2) and commentary.  However, the Resolution uses the word “primarily” where the MPC uses the word “solely” because, given the fact that antisocial personality disorder consists of a number of symptom traits in addition to antisocial behavior, the MPC language does not achieve its intended effect.  The Resolution’s language thus broadens the category of offenders whose responsibility is not considered sufficiently diminished to warrant mitigation.

Similarly, the Resolution excludes from the death penalty exemption those offenders who lack appreciation or control of their actions at the time of the offense due “solely to the acute effects of alcohol or other drugs.”   Substance abuse often plays a role in crime.  When voluntary ingestion of psychoactive substances compromises an offender’s cognitive or volitional capacities, the law sometimes is willing to mitigate culpability at trial.  A person whose acute substance abuse does not prevent conviction of capital murder, however, presumably was not seriously compromised at the time of the offense and should not be exempted from the death penalty.  Cf. Harris v. Cockrell, 313 F.3d 238 (5th Cir. 2003), cert. denied sub nom., Harris v. Dretke, 124 S.Ct. 1503 (2004) (failure to explicitly direct jury to consider alcohol abuse as a mitigating factor in capital sentencing proceedings does not violate due process). At the same time, the Resolution is not meant to prevent exemption from the death penalty of those offenders who are chronic abusers of alcohol or drugs or who can point to other mental conditions that, in combination with the acute effects of substance abuse, resulted in a lack of appreciation or control at the time of the offense.

RESOLUTION 3:

Mental Disorder or Disability After Imposition of Death Sentence: Sentences of death shall be reduced to lesser punishment if prisoners under such sentences are found at any time subsequent to sentencing to have a mental disorder or disability that significantly impairs their ability (a) to understand and appreciate the nature of the punishment or its purpose, (b) to understand and communicate information relating to the death sentence and any proceeding brought to set it aside, and (c) to make rational choices about such proceedings. 

Commentary.   The first two Resolutions describe those individuals whose mental condition at the time of the offense renders a death sentence disproportionate to their culpability.  This Resolution exempts from the death penalty those individuals who may have been properly found to be deserving of the death penalty at the time it was imposed but who have become unfit subjects for execution because of deterioration in their mental condition subsequent to sentencing.  Specifically, Resolution 3 defines “competency to be executed” and provides that, once found incompetent under this standard, an offender’s death sentence should be reduced to a lesser penalty.

In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), the United States Supreme Court held that imposition of the death penalty on a person who is incompetent to be executed violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.   The Court did not provide a test for incompetency in this context.  Nor did it set forth a definitive rationale for its holding that might have helped formulate such a test.  Rather it listed, without indicating their relative importance, a number of possible reasons for the competency requirement. These rationales included the need to ensure the offender could provide counsel with information that might lead to vacation of sentence; the view that, in the words of Lord Coke, execution of a “mad” person is a “miserable spectacle . . .of extream inhumanity and cruelty [that] can be no example to others;” and the notion that retribution cannot be exacted from a person who does not understand why he or she is being executed. Id. at  406-08. Apparently based on the latter rationale, Justice Powell, in his concurring opinion in Ford, stated:  “I would hold that the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution only of those who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.” Id. at 422.  (Powell, J., concurring). 

Clause (a) of this Resolution expands upon this test by requiring that the offender not only be “aware” of the nature and purpose of punishment but also that he or she “appreciate” what the death penalty is and why it is being imposed.  If, as many commentators have argued, the primary purpose of the competency-to-be-executed requirement is the final one listed above--assuring retribution is exacted--then the offender should have more than a shallow understanding of why he or she is being executed. See Barbara Ward, Competency for Execution: Problems in Law and Psychiatry, 14 Florida State University Law Review 35, 49-56 (1986); Christopher Slobogin, Mental Illness and the Death Penalty, 24 Men. & Phys. Dis. L. Rep. 667, 675-77 (2000).  Rather, as one court put it, the offender should “quail” in the face of an impending death sentence, or at least “take account of its significance.”  Musselwhite v. State, 215 Miss. 363, 60 So.2d 807 (1952).  This reasoning requires modification of Justice Powell’s dictum.

Clause (b) of the Resolution also includes within the definition of competency-to-be-executed the requirement that the defendant be able to understand and communicate information that might nullify the death sentence.  While Justice Powell was correct in Ford when he stated that today’s extensive review of death sentences minimizes the extent to which mitigating information goes undiscovered, 477 U.S. at 420 (Powell, J., concurring), the fact remains that scores of people on Death Row have been exonerated based on claims of factual innocence.  The possibility, however slim, that an incompetent individual may not be able to assist an attorney in reconstructing a viable factual or legal claim requires that the competency-to-be-executed standard include this component as well. 
 
For the same sort of reason, clause (c) is necessary.  An ability merely to understand and communicate facts is insufficient if an offender, once presented with a viable appellate argument, refuses to pursue it because of an irrational misperception or depression stemming from mental disability or disorder.   For instance, if an offender suffering from schizophrenia tells his attorney that he wants to forego an appeal because the future of civilization depends upon his death, cf. Illinois v. Haynes, 737 N.E.2d 169, 178 (Ill. 2000), the choice should not be considered competent.  Similarly, apathy and anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure) might lead a person on death row to abandon his appeals, when in fact amelioration of these depressive symptoms might have restored a desire to fight the sentence. The state, as well as the individual, has a very strong interest in ensuring the reliability and integrity of death penalty proceedings.  Given the strength of this interest, a relatively high degree of rationality ought to be required in order to find a person competent to make decisions regarding proceedings concerning the validity of a death sentence.  See Richard J. Bonnie, The Dignity of the Condemned, 74 Virginia Law Review 1363, 1388-89 (1988); Cf. Richard J. Bonnie, The Competency of Criminal Defendants: Beyond Dusky and Drope, 47 University of Miami Law Review 539, 579-580 (1993).   

Finally, this Resolution requires that, once an offender is found incompetent to be executed, execution may not take place even if the individual subsequently becomes competent through treatment or remission.   Some courts have decided that the government may forcibly medicate incompetent individuals if necessary to render them competent to be executed, on the ground that once an individual is fairly convicted and sentenced to death, the state’s interest in carrying out the sentence outweighs any individual interest in avoiding medication.  Singleton v. Norris, 319 F.3d 1018 (8th Cir. 2003).  Other courts have more persuasively held that treatment designed to ensure a person’s execution violates constitutional norms.  Perry v. Louisiana, 610 So.2d 746 (La. 1992).   According to the Louisiana Supreme Court in Perry, such treatment “is antithetical to the basic principles of the healing arts,” “fails to measurably contribute to the social goals of capital punishment,” and “is apt to be administered erroneously, arbitrarily or capriciously.”  Id. at 751.    If a person who is found incompetent is not permanently exempted from the death penalty, the outcome, if not the purpose, of any psychiatric treatment provided is to assure the person’s death.   Involving a doctor, bound by the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, in such treatment undermines the integrity of the mental health profession. Kirk W. Heilbrun, Michael L. Radalet, Joel A. Dvoskin, The Debate on Treating Individuals Incompetent for Execution, 149 American Journal of Psychiatry 596 (1992); Richard J. Bonnie, Dilemmas in Administering the Death Penalty: Conscientious Abstention, Professional Ethics and the Needs of the Legal System, 14 Law and Human Behavior 67 (1990). Execution of a person who has been so treated is as much a “miserable spectacle” as execution of the untreated mentally disabled person, especially because treated individuals can still suffer relapses and experience uneven levels of competence.  

In addition to these ethical and legal concerns, there is a significant danger that execution of someone who is restored to competency will produce unreliable outcomes.  Someone who is so mentally disordered as to fail the low competency-to-be-executed standard after sentence is imposed may well have been mentally disordered at the time of the offense.  Thus, this Resolution would also encompass individuals who may also meet the standards expressed in Resolution 1 or 2, were sufficient information about their mental state at the time of the offense available.    

MEMBERS OF THE TASK FORCE ON
 MENTAL IILLNESS AND THE DEATH PENALTY

Ronald J. Tabak (Chair)	Special Counsel to IRR Counsel; IRR Death Penalty Committee; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Dr. Michael Abramsky	Clinical Psychologist
Michael Allen			Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Dr. Xavier F. Amador		Columbia University College of Physician & Surgeons and 
				Institute for Research to Practice
George Annas			IRR Human Rights Committee; Boston Univ. School of 
				Public Health
Heather Barr			Urban Justice Center, Mental Health Project
Donna Beavers		American Psychological Association
John Blume			Cornell Law School
Richard J. Bonnie		University of Virginia Law School
Colleen Brady 		The Legal Aid Society, Capital Division
Richard Burr			Burr & Welch
Dr. Joel A. Dvoskin		American Psychological Association (Tucson, Arizona)
Dr. James Eisenberg		Professor of Psychology, Lake Erie College
James W. Ellis			Univ. of New Mexico School of Law
Deborah Fleischaker 		ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project
Lindsay Glauner		ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project
I. Michael Greenberger	IRR Criminal Justice Committee; Univ. of Maryland Law School
Lisa Greenman		Maryland Federal Public Defender Organization
Dr. Kirk S. Heilbrun		Drexel University; American Psychological Association
Scharlette Holdman		Center for Capital Assistance
Ron Honberg			National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
Ralph Ibson			National Mental Health Association
Dr. Matthew Johnson		John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Rachel King			American Civil Liberties Union
Dorean Koenig	IRR Death Penalty Committee; Thomas M. Cooley Law School
Dr. Diane Marsh 	Dr. Diane T. Marsh, University of  Pittsburgh at Greensburg; American Psychological Association" 
Hazel Moran	National Mental Health Association, Juvenile Justice Project
John Parry			ABA Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law
Jennifer Radden	University of Massachusetts
Laura Rovner			IRR Disability Rights Commission; Univ. of North Dakota
				School of Law
Diane Rust-Tierney		American Civil Liberties Union
Robyn Shapiro		Michael Best & Friedrich
Christopher Slobogin		University of Florida Levin College of Law  
Tanya Terrell-Collier		ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities 
Kathy Wayland		Habeas Corpus Resource Center