This paper shall then focus on the issues found in deinstitutionalization, where the lack of institutional structures in the United States indicates that the responsibility for the crime might not lie entirely on the shoulders of the criminal but also with the legal system's standards for the release of those who have criminally- insane tendencies.
Several court cases shall be discussed in order to provide a clear image of the situations of culpability and of the issues surrounding de-institutionalization. Of note is the U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Penry v. Lynaugh in 1989, where the court determined that executing people who had a serious degree of mental retardation was not in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Also, the case of Webdale v. Goldstien in 1999 shall be examined, where a mentally ill individual was released from an institution for the criminally insane because the state no longer had the funds to support his case. These specific cases, in addition to similar cases selected exclusively to support both sides of the argument, shall serve as examples of the two sides of this highly loaded issue. A conclusion shall tie all major points made within this paper into a coherent whole. .
Criminal Culpability and the Mentally Ill and the Mentally Retarded.
The issue of whether or not the mentally ill or the mentally retarded criminal is responsible for his actions is the focus of this particular section. [As the majority of those who have been placed on Death Row due to the violent nature of their crimes have been men, this paper shall refer to all criminals in the masculine sense. However, this should not be interpreted as being exclusive of the female gender, but instead only a means of taking a linguistic burden out of the text.] Capital punishment, of course, refers to the punishment of death on the criminal. However, as the justice Harry Blackmun declared in 1994:.
