To date, very few instruments have been developed for the purpose of assisting evaluators in the assessment of competency for execution. One of the first—the Checklist for Competency for Execution Evaluations—is described in this entry. The checklist consists of four sections that describe important and relevant psycholegal criteria to be considered in this type of forensic assessment. The purpose of the checklist is to guide evaluators through the interview portion of a competency for execution evaluation. At present, there is no available research that examines the reliability or validity of this checklist.

Evaluations of competency for execution are probably the least common type of criminal forensic evaluation conducted, simply because of the relatively small number of individuals who have been sentenced to death (as compared with ...