| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Atkins is sentenced to death, and he's mentally retarded. |
| Posture: | Appealed, or maybe habeas |
| Issue: | Is executing a mentally retarded criminal cruel and unusual? |
| Holding: | Yes. Reversed. |
| Rule: | Standards of decency have evolved to the point that we now know the death penalty is excessive, as applied to the retarded. |
| Reasoning: | If you meet the law's requirements for culpability, you should be
tried and punished. But you shouldn't be punished to the same
degree as a fully competent adult, if you're not one.
There's a unanimous trend in this direction. Review of the purposes of punishment. Deterrence and retribition aren't really served by this. |
| Dicta: | Scalia, dissenting: a nicely literary dismantlement of the majority. |