Institutional Failure in the Life Histories of Men Condemned to Death

The literature on capital murder defendants sen tenced to death documents organic and functional mental problems in many of them,1-4 butonly one paper discusses the role of social institutions in the lives of these people prior to their convictions.5 This article reviews the case histories of 16 death row in mates, focusing on the relationship between the problems they demonstrated and the institutional response to those problems. By focusing exclusively on the individual, prior research has implied that the character of the defendant and the circumstances of the crime are sufficient to understand lethal violence. However, if institutional failure combines with indi vidual psychopathology, this implies that social re sponse as well as individual pathology contribute to cases of lethal violence that lead to a death sentence. Patterns of institutional failure among men sen tenced to death began to become apparent based on postconviction investigative work undertaken in Californiaby one of the authors (D.F.). The 16 cases reported here, an admittedlysmall sample of death row clients, camefrom a capital resource center. The selection of thissample was based on urgency, mean ing that clients closest to execution received investi gative assistance first. Although thisisnot a random-sampling process, there is no reason to believe that this selection process would have tended to over-select for institutional failure or psychiatric im pairment. Review of the trial recordssuggests that the character of the men and the circumstances of Mr. Freedman, Freedman Investigations, isa criminal investigator i