Dateline: 06/20/02

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that executing mentally retarded convicts violates the Eighth Amendment's constitutional protection against "cruel and unusual punishment."

While this landmark decision does not address the constitutionality of capital punishment in general, it reverses a 1989 Supreme Court ruling which found executing the mentally retarded to be constitutional.

According to the majority opinion in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's decision responds to changes in public opinion on capital punishment since 1989. Since 1989, the number of states barring execution of the mentally retarded has increased from two to eighteen. 

"It is not so much the number of these states that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of the change," wrote Justice Stevens.

The court's ruling will prevent the execution of Daryl Atkins, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to be executed in Virginia.

In its majority decision, the court reasoned that while mentally retarded persons frequently know the difference between right and wrong, and are legally competent to stand trial, they suffer "diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand others' reactions." 

While these "deficiencies do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions," continued the court, they do diminish the "personal culpability" of the mentally retarded.

The court also questioned whether or not the legal "underpinnings" of the death penalty -- retribution and deterrence of capital crimes -- could apply to mentally retarded offenders.

Furthermore, the court found that mentally retarded defendants face a "special risk of wrongful execution because of the possibility that they will unwittingly confess to crimes they did not commit, their lesser ability to give their counsel meaningful assistance, and the facts that they are typically poor witnesses and that their demeanor may create an unwarranted impression of lack of remorse for their crimes."

Joining Justice Stevens in the majority opinion were justices andra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Dissenting opinions were issued by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion objected to the majority's dependence on public opinion for its decision. "Even if I were to accept the legitimacy of the Court ’s decision to reach beyond the product of legislatures and practices of sentencing juries to discern a national standard of decency," wrote Rehnquist, "I would take issue with the blind-faith credence it accords the opinion polls brought to our attention."

In another dissenting opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, "If one is to say as the court does today that ALL executions of the mentally retarded are so morally repugnant as to violate our national standards of decency, surely the consensus it points to must be one that has set its righteous face against ALL such executions."

The court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia clears the way for condemned inmates in the 20 states now allowing the execution of the retarded to attempt to prove they are mentally retarded and have their sentences changed to life in prison.