USA - South Dakota. The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected SB 64 to prohibit the death penalty against severely mentally ill.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 4-3 on February 20 to defeat SB 64, which, when introduced, would have prohibited the use of the death penalty against individuals with severe mental illness. Before it was defeated, the bill had been amended twice in committee to eliminate the prohibition against capital punishment for the severely mentally ill and replace it with an enumerated list of mitigating factors that jurors could consider as a basis to impose a life sentence instead of the death penalty.