Transcript Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), is a case in which the

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
• Around midnight on August 16, 1996, following a day
spent together drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana,
18 year old Daryl Atkins and his accomplice, William
Jones, walked to a nearby 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 to 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
were captured on the ATM's CCTVcamera, which was
of the two men with Nesbitt in the middle and leaning
across Jones to withdraw money, and further forensic
evidence implicating the two were 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' version of events
was the more coherent and credible, and convicted
Atkins of capital murder.
The ruling
• The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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 in 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
in 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 twentyone, plus the federal government. While there are 50 states, 19
don't allow the death penalty under any circumstance, making 31
a clear majority of the death penalty states. 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.
來源:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_v._Virginia