Here are some books that deal with the mentally handicapped and the death penalties issed on them.

Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida's Law School has written a new book about the state's legal authority to deprive people with mental disabilities of life or liberty. The book discusses a number of well known cases such as that of John Hinckley and Andrea Yates. It also includes discussion of laws dealing with the insanity defense, the death penalty, commitment of sexual predators, and hospitalization of people considered unable to make rational decisions. The book advances new ways of thinking and calls for a complete revamping of the insanity defense, the abolition of the guilty but mentally ill verdict, and a prohibition on execution of people with mental disability. ("Minding Justice: Laws that Deprive People with Mental Disability of Life and Liberty," Harvard Univ. Press 2006). See Mental Illness and Books.

• Katherine Norgard's recent book, "Hard to Place: A Crime of Alcohol," is a personal account of the trauma experienced by her family when her adopted son is charged with a capital crime. The book is the author's story of fighting to save her son after he was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of an elderly couple in Tuscon, Arizona. At the time of his trial, she still did not know that her son, John Eastlack, had been born with fetal alcohol syndrome, despite his signs of mental illness. The disorder occurs when mothers drink during pregnancy, and it often leaves children with seriously impaired judgment. Eastlack's brain damage was discovered after he was on death row. Eight years after he was sentenced to die, his sentence was reversed. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. CUNY Law Professor Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier notes, "Kathy Norgard's book gives a unique personal and professional insight into the difficulties a family faces when a loved one is charged with a capital crime. As a mental health professional, she uses her personal experiences to illustrate how mental disabilities, and fetal alcohol syndrome in particular, relate to our nation's capital punishment system. As a mother, she reveals a love for her family and illustrates a side of the death penalty that is rarely considered." Norgard, a Tuscon psychologist, now works to prevent other children from being born with fetal alcohol syndrome, the leading cause of mental retardation in the United States. Her book contains a forward by Sister Helen Prejean, who writes: "You, the reader of this book, are privileged to enter into her soul. Her words are transparent, unsparing of herself. She takes you to the deep places. She's brave to write such a book and to share it with the world." (Recover Resources Press, 2006).
• John Grisham has written 18 best-selling novels. The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is his first work of non-fiction and focuses on a case in which a mentally ill man, Ron William, spends 20 years on death row for a murder he did not commit.
  It comes at a time when, on January 5, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a man with schizophrenia in Texas in order to set standard for determining when mental illness is so severe that execution is unconstitutional—a case in which NAMI has filed a "friend of the court" brief  on the issue (See below).
  Grisham's focus is less about standards of mental illness than making a case that the criminal justice system is so inherently vulnerable and flawed that the death penalty is inherently wrong. He is passionate in presenting a case that "not in my most creative moment could I have conjured up." It has all the plot elements of an American tragedy.
  Ron Williamson, a major league baseball draft pick from Oklahoma is signed with the Oakland As in 1971 and later traded to the Yankees for the minor league reserves. But after six years, he returns home, with broken dreams. He develops schizophrenia.
  Unable to keep a job, Williamson moved in with his mother and slept 20 hours a day. Local police, seeking to solve a rape and murder case focused on him. "He certainly seemed suspicious," Grisham notes. "He acted strange, kept strange hours…and most damning of all, lived close to the murder scene."
  During his trial, Williamson's jailers "fine-tuned" his condition with Thorazine. When he was in his cell and they wanted peace, "they pumped him full." Other times, they reduced the dose so that he would appear more intense, loud, and belligerent when he was in court. His court-appointed lawyer, who was blind and working alone, was afraid of him, sitting as far away as possible
  Although innocent, Williamson was convicted—based on bad police work, bad science, faulty eyewitness identification, and an arrogant prosecutor. Along with lazy lawyers and bad lawyers, Grisham notes, these are the ingredients for countless wrongful convictions.
  Even when appeals succeed, the cost is steep—in time and money, on both sides, and on the life of the defendant.
  Williamson spent 20 years on death row, before his conviction was overturned. While in prison, his mental condition deteriorated, and the book is notable for its description of how he was treated. Guards would amuse themselves at night by pretending to be voices, sending him into a frenzy.
  As sick as he was, Willamson never wavered in his protest that he was innocent. Once acquitted, after a new trial, he exhibited remarkable grace and dignity, even forgiveness, refusing to dwell on the past.
  After his release from prison in 1999, Williamson was interviewed on Good Morning America and treated as a celebrity in New York City. He toured Yankee Stadium, where he had once hoped to play. Standing in awe on the field, he said: "All I ever wanted to do was play baseball. It's the only fun I've ever had."
  In the case of Panetti v. Quarterman, which the Supreme Court accepted this month for argument, the facts are different and harsher. No one challenges the facts that Texas inmate Scott Panetti fatally shot his in-laws in front of his estranged wife and three-year old child in 1992. The Navy veteran, however, had been hospitalized 14 times for schizophrenia. Nonetheless, he was found both competent to stand trial and to represent himself instead of through a lawyer.
  During the trial, Panetti was often incoherent. He tried to subpoena Jesus Christ, Pope John Paul II, and President John F. Kennedy as witnesses. Although he understands that he is sentenced to be executed, he believes it is largely because the state is trying to keep him from preaching the gospel.
  Under a 1986 Supreme Court opinion, execution of mentally ill persons is constitutionally prohibited as cruel and inhuman punishment—but only under a narrow "awareness test" in which defendants need to be able to understand "the punishment they are about to suffer" and "why they are to suffer it."
  NAMI's brief in the case argues that the test "makes no sense when applied to a prisoner who is plagued by delusions of grand prosecution."
  More broadly, Grisham believes such cases should shock, disturb, and infuriate anyone who maintains faith in the criminal justice system and the death penalty. The Innocent Man is worth reading as a test.