| Atkins v. Virginia |
|
Supreme Court of the United States |
Argued February 20, 2002
Decided June 20, 2002
|
| Full case name: |
Daryl Renard Atkins, Petitioner v. Virginia |
|
| Citations: |
536 U.S. 304; 122 S. Ct. 2242; 153 L. Ed. 2d 335; 2002 U.S. LEXIS 4648; 70 U.S.L.W. 4585; 2002
Cal. Daily Op. Service 5439; 2002 Daily Journal DAR 6937; 15 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 397 |
|
|
| Prior history: |
Defendant convicted, York County Circuit
Court; affirmed in part, reversed in part, remanded, 510 S.E.2d 445 (Va. 1999); defendant resentenced, York County Circuit Court; affirmed, 534 S.E.2d 312 (Va.
2000); cert. granted, 533 U.S. 976 (2001) |
|
|
| Subsequent history: |
Remanded to Circuit Court, 581 S.E.2d 514 (Va. 2003) |
|
|
| Holding |
| A Virginia law allowing the execution of mentally handicapped individuals violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of
cruel and unusual punishments. Supreme Court of Virginia reversed and remanded. |
| Court membership |
Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer |
| Case opinions |
Majority by: Stevens
Joined by: O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent by: Rehnquist
Joined by: Scalia, Thomas
Dissent by: Scalia
Joined by: Rehnquist, Thomas
|
| Laws applied |
| U.S. Const. amend. VIII |
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 the mentally retarded
violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and
unusual punishments.
The case
Not three in the morning on August 16, 1996, following a day
spent together drinking alcohol and smoking Marijuana, Daryl Atkins and his accomplice, William Jones, drove to a convenience
store where they abducted Eric Nesbitt, an airman from nearby Langley Air Force
Base. Unsatisfied with the $60 they found in his wallet, Atkins and Jones drove Nesbitt in his own vehicle to a nearby
ATM and forced him withdraw a further $200. In spite of Nesbitt's pleas, the
two abductors then drove him to an isolated location, where he was shot eight times, killing him.
Footage of Atkins and Jones in the vehicle with Nesbitt was captured on the ATM's CCTV camera, and further forensic evidence implicating the two was found in Nesbitt's
abandoned vehicle. The two suspects were quickly tracked down and arrested. In custody, each man claimed that the other had
pulled the trigger. Atkins' version of the events, however, was found to contain a number of inconsistencies. Doubts concerning
Atkins's testimony were strengthened when a cell-mate claimed that Atkins had confessed to him that he had shot Nesbitt. A deal
of life imprisonment was negotiated with Jones in return for his full testimony against Atkins. The jury decided that Jones's
version of events was the more coherent and credible, and convicted Atkins of capital murder.
During the penalty phase of the trial, the defense presented Atkins's school records and the results of an IQ test carried out by clinical psychologist Dr. Evan Nelson, that placed his score at 59. On this
basis they proposed that he was "mildly mentally retarded". Atkins was nevertheless
sentenced to death.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the conviction but
reversed the sentence after finding that an improper sentencing verdict form had been used. At retrial, the prosecution proved
two aggravating factors under Virginia law -- that Atkins posed a risk of "future dangerousness," based on a string of previous
violent convictions, and that the offense was committed in a vile manner. The state's witness, Dr Stanton Samenow, countered the defense's arguments that Atkins was mentally retarded, stating that
Atkins's vocabulary, general knowledge and behavior suggested that he possessed at least average intelligence. As a result,
Atkins's death sentence was upheld. The Virginia Supreme Court subsequently affirmed the sentence based on a prior Supreme Court
decision, Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989).
Justice Cynthia D. Kinser authored the five-member majority. Justices Leroy Rountree Hassell, Sr. and Lawrence L.
Koontz, Jr. each authored dissenting opinions and joined in each other's dissent.
Because of what it perceived to be a shift in the judgments of state
legislatures as to whether the mentally retarded are appropriate candidates for execution in the thirteen years since
Penry was decided, the Supreme Court agreed to review Atkins' death sentence. The Court heard oral arguments in the case on
February 20, 2002.
The ruling
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution generally forbids cruel and unusual punishments. In the ruling it was
stated that, unlike other provisions of the Constitution, the Eighth Amendment should be interpreted in light of the "evolving
standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." The best evidence on this score was determined to be the
judgment of state legislatures. Accordingly, the Court had previously found that the death penalty was inappropriate for the
crime of rape, Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), or for those convicted of felony murder who neither themselves killed, attempted to
kill, or intended to kill, Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S.
782 (1982). The Court found that the Eighth Amendment forbids the imposition of the death penalty in these cases because
"most of the legislatures that have recently addressed the matter" have rejected the death penalty for these offenders, and the
Court will generally defer to the judgments of those bodies.
The Court then described how a national consensus that the mentally retarded should not be executed had emerged. In
1986, Georgia was the first state to outlaw the
execution of the mentally retarded. Congress followed two years later, and the
next year Maryland joined these two jurisdictions. Thus, when the Court confronted the issue in
Penry in 1989, the Court could not say that a national consensus against executing the mentally
retarded had emerged. Over the next twelve years, nineteen more states exempted the mentally retarded from capital punishment
under their laws, bringing the total number of states to twenty-one, plus the federal government. In light of the "consistency of
direction of change" toward a prohibition on the execution of the mentally retarded, and the relative rarity of such executions
in states that still allow it, the Court proclaimed that a "national consensus has developed against it." The Court, however,
left it to individual states to make the difficult decision regarding what determines mental retardation.
Also, the "relationship between mental retardation and the penological purposes served by the death penalty" justifies a
conclusion that executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment that the Eighth Amendment should forbid. In other
words, unless it can be shown that executing the mentally retarded promotes the goals of retribution and deterrence, doing so is
nothing more than "purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering," making the death penalty cruel and unusual in
those cases. Being mentally retarded means that a person not only has substandard intellectual functioning but also significant
limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, and self-direction. These deficiencies typically manifest before
the age of eighteen. Although they can know the difference between right and wrong, these deficiencies mean they have a lesser
ability to learn from experience, engage in logical reasoning, and understand the reactions of others. This means that inflicting
the death penalty on one mentally retarded individual is less likely to deter other mentally retarded individuals from committing
crimes. As for retribution, society's interest in seeing that a criminal get his "just deserts" means that the death penalty must
be confined to the "most serious" of murders, not simply the average murder. The goal of retribution is not served by imposing
the death penalty on a group of people who have a significantly lesser capacity to understand why they are being executed.
Because the mentally retarded are not able to communicate with the same sophistication as the average offender, there is a
greater likelihood that their deficiency in communicative ability will be interpreted by juries as a lack of remorse for their
crimes. They typically make poor witnesses, being more prone to suggestion and willing to "confess" in order to placate or please
their questioner. As such, there is a greater risk that the jury may impose the death penalty despite the existence of evidence
that suggests that a lesser penalty should be imposed. In light of the "evolving standards of decency" that the Eighth Amendment
demands, the fact that the goals of retribution and deterrence are not served as well in the execution of the mentally retarded,
and the heightened risk that the death penalty will be imposed erroneously, the Court concluded that the Eighth Amendment forbids
the execution of the mentally retarded.
In dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence
Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that in spite of the
increased number of states which had outlawed the execution of the mentally retarded, there was no clear national consensus, and
that even given if there were, there was no basis in the Eighth Amendment for using such measures of opinion to determine what is
"cruel and unusual". Justice Antonin 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". The citing of an amicus brief from the European Union also drew
criticism from Chief Justice Rehnquist, who denounced the "Court's decision to place weight on foreign laws."
Subsequent Developments
Ironically, although Atkins's case and ruling may have saved other mentally retarded inmates from the death penalty, a jury in
Virginia decided in July 2005 that he was intelligent enough
to be executed as the constant contact he had with his lawyers had intellectually stimulated him and raised his IQ above 70, making him competent to be put to death under Virginia law. The prosecution had
argued that his poor school performance was caused by his use of alcohol and drugs, and that his lower scores in earlier IQ tests
were tainted. His execution date was set for December 2, 2005
but was later stayed. The Virginia Supreme Court has recently reversed Atkins's death sentence again, although on state
procedural grounds.
See also
External links
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