Court bars executing retarded

The United States has reached a collective moral judgment that mentally retarded individuals should not face the death penalty.

In a landmark 6-to-3 decision, the US Supreme Court Thursday declared a constitutional prohibition on imposing capital punishment on convicted murderers and other capital defendants who are deemed to be mentally retarded. The court ruled that such death sentences amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

It marks the first time since 1988 that the court has expanded the Eighth Amendment's categorical ban on an aspect of the death penalty. The immediate impact of the ruling will be to create new grounds for appeal for death-row inmates, legal analysts say, but the actual number of prisoners who may have their sentences changed from death to life in prison is likely to be small.

On a broader level, the decision adds momentum to efforts in the US to abolish the death penalty altogether – an effort that has accelerated following the use of DNA evidence to uncover innocent convicts on death row. In addition, the decision opens the door to future cases examining the constitutionality of executing 16- and 17-year-olds, because similar constitutional reasoning may apply in such cases.

In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens writes, "We are not persuaded that the execution of mentally retarded criminals will measurably advance the deterrent or the retributive purpose of the death penalty." He adds, "Construing and applying the Eighth Amendment in the light of our 'evolving standards of decency,' we therefore conclude that such punishment is excessive."

Signing on to his majority opinion were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia denounced the majority's decision as "the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence."

"Seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members," Justice Scalia writes. He predicted a flood of appeals from death-row inmates falsely claiming to be mentally retarded.

Death-penalty opponents hailed the decision in Atkins v. Virginia as a major step forward for the nation.

"It makes the statement that this country is not going to execute people who have the mind of a child - we finally have now joined the rest of the world in that," says Jonathan Broun of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, N.C.

A majority of justices found that an evolving standard of decency related to the imposition of the death penalty had resulted in the emergence of a national consensus opposed to subjecting mentally retarded individuals to capital punishment.

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