Atkins v. Virginia

The Eighth Amendment standard for cruel and unusual punishment, as stated by the Supreme Court in Weems v United States, "may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice". The court expanded this idea of "evolving standards of decency" to death penalty jurisprudence in Coker v. Georgia holding that death sentences are unconstitutionally excessive if they don't advance legitimate penological purposes or are disproportionate to the severity of the crime. Later, in Penry v. Lynaugh the court found insufficient objective evidence of a national consensus to rule that executing the intellectually disabled was unconstitutional. Concurring in Penry v. Lynaugh, Justice William Brennan wrote that the proportionality of a punishment depended on the severity of the injury caused and the defendant's moral culpability. In 1986, Georgia became the first state to outlaw the execution of intellectually disabled people. Congress followed two years later, and the next year Maryland joined those two jurisdictions. Thus, when the Court confronted the issue in Penry in 1989, the Court could not say that a national consensus against executing intellectually disabled people had emerged. Over the next 12 years, 16 more states exempted intellectually disabled people from capital punishment under their laws, bringing the total number of states to 18, plus the federal government. ==Case history==

Around midnight on August 16, 1996, following a day spent together drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, the 18-year-old Daryl Renard Atkins (born November 6, 1977) and his accomplice, William Jones, walked to a nearby convenience store, where they abducted Eric Nesbitt, an airman from nearby Langley Air Force Base. When they realized Nesbitt was only carrying $60, they drove him to a nearby ATM where footage from a surveillance camera showed them forcing Nesbitt to withdraw another $200. The two abductors then drove Nesbitt to an isolated location where Nesbitt was shot eight times and killed as he pleaded for his life. During the sentencing phase the state sought the death penalty. Forensic psychologist Evan Nelson testified that Atkins had an IQ of 59. Nelson said this was "in the range of being mildly mentally retarded". After hearing the testimony, the jury sentenced Atkins to death. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed Atkins's conviction, but reversed the death sentence on appeal, finding that the verdict form had not included an option for the jury to impose a life sentence. At the second sentencing hearing psychologist Stanton Samenow testified that Atkins was of "average intelligence at least". Samenow assessed Atkins's vocabulary and knowledge of current affairs, and testified that he understood cause and effect, and could use relatively complex words like orchestra and decimal. Samenow acknowledged that Atkins's academic performance was "by and large" terrible. The prosecution also presented testimony about Atkins's criminal history which began in early adolescence and included over a dozen prior felony convictions for robbery, larceny and burglary. Atkins was sentenced to death a second time. The sentence was affirmed by the Virginia Supreme Court based on a prior Supreme Court decision, Penry v. Lynaugh. Justice Cynthia D. Kinser authored the five-member majority. Justices Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. and Lawrence L. Koontz Jr. authored dissenting opinions. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari "because of the gravity of the concerns expressed by the dissenters" and "in light of the dramatic shift in the state legislative landscape that has occurred in the past 13 years." The Court heard oral arguments in the case on February 20, 2002. ==Supreme Court==

Majority opinion The "relationship between mental retardation and the penological purposes served by the death penalty" justifies a conclusion that executing intellectually disabled people is cruel and unusual punishment that the Eighth Amendment should forbid. In other words, unless it can be shown that executing the intellectually disabled serves recognized penological goals, doing so is nothing more than "purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering", making the death penalty cruel and unusual in those cases. Justice Stevens relied on clinical diagnostic criteria to conclude that people with intellectual disability "have 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 the reactions of others". When Penry was decided only two U.S. states banned death sentences for the intellectually disabled. That number had increased to 18 by the time Atkins was decided. Although 18 was not a majority of the 38 death penalty states, the Court said the "consistency of direction of change" toward a prohibition on the execution of intellectually disabled people and the relative rarity of such executions, supported their finding that a "national consensus has developed against it." This determination was accompanied by a footnote stating that a "broader social and professional consensus" provides "additional evidence" of a national consensus. Dissents Dissenting opinions were written by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The Chief Justice said that "foreign laws, the views of professional and religious organizations, and opinion polls" were not "objective indicia of contemporary values" under the Court's existing precedents. The dissent objected to broadening the analysis to include this "additional evidence". Justice Antonin Scalia said there was no clear national consensus to exempt the intellectually disabled from death penalty eligibility and agreed with the Chief Justice that the amici cited to provide "additional evidence" of a national consensus were irrelevant. Scalia commented in his dissent that "seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members." == Reaction ==

Many mental health organizations had filed amici briefs in support of Atkins. The Executive Director of the American Association on Mental Retardation said it was "an important day for disability advocates and for our country." The American Psychiatric Association argued that mental health professionals can make an "objective determination" of intellectual disability "using time-tested instruments and protocols with proven validity and reliability". Douglas Mossman questioned the implications of the clinical analysis underlying the Atkins decision. He said the court's basic acceptance of the claim that moral responsibility or blameworthiness is causally related to psychiatric diagnoses be expanded to other psychiatric disabilities. == Subsequent developments==

In the Supreme Court In Hall v. Florida (2014), twelve years after Atkins, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the discretion of states to implement the Atkins ruling. Hall, the first case to consider a state-imposed limitation on Atkins-eligibility, held that “[i]ntellectual disability is a condition, not a number,” and that “[i]t is not sound to view a single factor as dispositive.” In Moore v. Texas (2017) the Supreme Court found that "the lay perceptions" advanced by the "wholly non-clinical" Briseno factors—implemented by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after Atkins—"created an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed". The seven Briseno factors included questions like "can the person hide facts or lie effectively in his own or others' interests". On remand When Atkins was tested again, after the case was remanded back to state court, he scored above Virginia's cut-off score 70. Prosecutors insisted that the new scores confirmed Atkins was not intellectually disabled. They noted the circumstances of the crime including his ability to load and aim a gun, recognize an ATM card, direct the victim to withdraw cash and attempt to hide his involvement in the robbery from police were inconsistent with being "truly mentally retarded". The victim's mother was skeptical that Atkins was the right case to develop the law stating that "he's probably not the brightest bulb in the pack but I don't think he's mentally retarded." Defense attorneys described the case as "right on the edge". Prosecutors sought writs of mandamus and prohibition in the Virginia Supreme Court on the matter, claiming that Smiley had exceeded his judicial authority with his ruling. On June 4, 2009, the Virginia Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision authored by Chief Justice Leroy R. Hassell Sr., ruled that neither mandamus nor prohibition was available to overturn the court's decision to commute the sentence. Justice Cynthia D. Kinser, joined by Justice Donald W. Lemons, considered the two most conservative justices of the Court, wrote a lengthy dissent that was highly critical of both the majority's reasoning and the action of the circuit court in commuting the sentence. ==See also==