Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6–3 that executing people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments, but that states can define who has an intellectual disability. At the time Atkins was decided, 18 of the 38 death penalty states exempted mentally disabled offenders from the death penalty.
Twelve years later in Hall v. Florida the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the discretion under which U.S. states can designate an individual convicted of murder as too intellectually incapacitated to be executed.
Background
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.
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.
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".
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". 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
- List of United States Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 536
- List of United States Supreme Court cases
- Bigby v. Dretke
- Hall v. Florida – 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case limiting the death penalty in the wake of Atkins v. Virginia
- Monster (Walter Dean Myers novel)