The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area On 9 September 2010, Holly Wood was executed in Alabama after spending 16 years on death row. In a 2002 decision, the United States Supreme Court banned capital punishment for the mentally impaired. Despite an expert report indicating that Wood operated “at most, in the borderline range of intellectual functioning”, an appeal for clemency was turned down by Alabama Governor Bob Riley.53 On 23 September 2010, Teresa Lewis was executed in Virginia, despite the fact that she had been assessed as having “borderline mental retardation”. The execution was the first of a woman in Virginia since 1912 and the first in the United States since 2005. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell denied an appeal for clemency, stating that “No medical professional has concluded that Teresa Lewis meets the medical or statutory definition of mentally retarded.”54 International safeguards Federal laws providing for the death penalty involve serious crimes that result in death, such as murder committed during a drug-related shooting, civil rights offenses resulting in murder, murder related to the sexual exploitation of children, murder related to a carjacking or kidnapping, and murder related to rape. There are also a few very serious non-homicide crimes that may result in a death sentence, e.g., espionage, treason and possessing very large quantities of drugs or drug receipts as part of a continuing criminal enterprise. The United States Congress has also enacted several carefully circumscribed capital offenses intended to combat the threat of terrorist attacks resulting in widespread loss of life. These exceptionally grave criminal acts all have catastrophic effects on society.55 The United States Constitution, which applies to both state and federal convictions, prohibits the imposition of the death sentence if the offender was under the age of 18 when the capital offense was committed,56 is mentally disabled,57 or is legally insane at the time of the scheduled execution.58 Federal law specifically prohibits the consideration of a defendant’s race or national origin in deciding to seek or impose the 53  “Execution carried out in Alabama”, Amnesty International, 10 September 2010, <http://www.amnesty.org/en/ library/info/AMR51/084/2010/en>. 54  “Woman, 41, executed in Virginia”, New York Times, 23 September 2011, <http://www.nytimes. com/2010/09/24/us/24execute.html>. 55  Response to the ODIHR questionnaire on the death penalty from the Unites States Department of State, received on 11 September 2011., op. cit., note 43. 56  See Roper v. Simmons, 543 US 551 (2005). 57  See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 US 304 (2002). 58  See Ford v. Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986). 13