Atkins v virginia 2002. 7.5 Measures of Intelligence 2022-10-28
Atkins v virginia 2002
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Atkins v. Virginia was a 2002 United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that executing intellectually disabled individuals violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The case involved Daryl Renard Atkins, who had been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Virginia.
The case arose when Atkins, who had an IQ of 59, was found guilty of abduction, armed robbery, and capital murder in the shooting death of Eric Nesbitt, a Langley Air Force base airman. Atkins' lawyers argued that he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia was significant because it marked the first time that the Court had overturned a death sentence on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. Prior to this case, the Court had upheld the death penalty for individuals with intellectual disabilities in several cases.
In its ruling, the Court held that executing individuals with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Court reasoned that intellectually disabled individuals have diminished capacity for reasoning and understanding, and therefore may not fully comprehend the nature and consequences of their actions. As a result, executing such individuals does not serve the goals of retribution and deterrence that are often cited as justifications for the death penalty.
The Court also noted that society has evolved in its understanding of intellectual disabilities and that the practice of executing individuals with intellectual disabilities is now widely seen as unacceptable. In addition, the Court noted that a number of states had already banned the execution of intellectually disabled individuals, and that there was a national consensus against the practice.
The decision in Atkins v. Virginia was widely hailed as a victory for the rights of intellectually disabled individuals. It has had a significant impact on death penalty cases involving intellectually disabled individuals, as many states have revised their laws to reflect the Court's ruling. It has also served as a precedent for other cases involving the rights of individuals with disabilities, as the Court's reasoning in the case has been applied to other contexts as well.
Atkins v. Virginia
See ante, at 11—12, n. After spending the day drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, petitioner Daryl Renard Atkins and a partner in crime drove to a convenience store, intending to rob a customer. Petitioner's family members offered additional evidence in support of his mental retardation claim e. C July 1999 1999 83. In Coker, supra, at 595—596, we proscribed the death penalty for rape of an adult woman after finding that only one jurisdiction, Georgia, authorized such a punishment. To prove the second aggravator, the prosecution relied upon the trial record, including pictures of the deceased's body and the autopsy report. The majority of the state court rejected this contention, relying on our holding in Penry.
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ATKINS V. VIRGINIA
Petitioner's family members offered additional evidence in support of his mental retardation claim e. For example, several organizations with germane expertise have adopted official positions opposing the imposition of the death penalty upon a mentally retarded offender. As a sociological and moral conclusion that is implausible; and it is doubly implausible as an inter- pretation of the United States Constitution. As to retribution, the severity of the appropriate punishment necessarily depends on the offender's culpability. Rust-Tierney; for the American Psychological Association et al. . We have never before held it to be cruel and unusual punishment to impose a sentence in violation of some other constitutional imperative.
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ATKINS v. VIRGINIA
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted a stay following public protests over his execution. See also Stanford, 492 U. Mental retardation is a relatively rare thing. But if your sample included all the women at your school, it is likely that their heights would form a natural bell curve. In the Atkins case, the Supreme Court decided that intellectual disability does affect decision making and therefore should affect the nature of the punishment such criminals receive. Once the Court admits as it does that mental retardation does not render the offender morally blameless, ante, at 13—14, there is no basis for saying that the death penalty is never appropriate retri- bution, no matter how heinous the crime. Shurtleff, Attorney General of Utah; and for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S.
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Atkins v. Virginia :: 536 U.S. 304 (2002) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
The victims of these offenses provided graphic depictions of petitioner's violent tendencies: He hit one over the head with a beer bottle, id. Florida, Coker, we focused primarily on the then-recent legislation that had been enacted in response to our decision 10 years earlier in Furman v. . As Chief Justice Warren explained in his opinion in Trop v. The sentence was initially overturned due to a procedural error, and the prosecution used its own psychological expert at the retrial. Since Gregg, our jurisprudence has consistently confined the imposition of the death penalty to a narrow category of the most serious crimes.
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7.5 Measures of Intelligence
The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the imposition of the death penalty. If the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution. See ante, at 316-317, n. Weiner, The Mentally Disabled and the Law 12-14 3d ed. If the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution.
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ATKINS v. VIRGINIA.
The mean score of the test is 100, which means that a person receiving a score of 100 is considered to have an average level of cognitive functioning. Ray, Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity 65, 87-92 W. Of course this leads to the same conclusion discussed earlier—that the mentally retarded because they are less deterred are more likely to kill—which neither I nor the society at large believes. Virginia was a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court. Perske, People with Mental Retardation are Dying Legally, 35 Mental Retardation Feb.
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Atkins v. Virginia
Which of these views comes closest to your own? Finally, polling data shows a widespread consensus among Americans, even those who support the death penalty, that executing the mentally retarded is wrong. At resentencing the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed his conviction but remanded for resentencing because the trial court had used an improper verdict form, 257 Va. An extensive body of social science literature describes how methodological and other errors can affect the reliability and validity of estimates about the opinions and attitudes of a population derived from various sampling techniques. The Court's analysis rests on two fundamental assumptions: 1 that the Harmelin v. The attitudes of that body regarding crime and punishment are so far from being representative, even of the views of Catholics, that they are currently the object of intense national and entirely ecumenical criticism. Rumpz, Assistant Attorney General of Virginia, argued the cause for respondent. In 1990, Kentucky and Tennessee enacted statutes similar to those in Georgia and Maryland, as did New Mexico in 1991, and Arkansas, Colorado, Washington, Indiana, and Kansas in 1993 and 1994.
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ATKINS v. VIRGINIA(2002)
Thus, executing the mentally retarded will not measurably further the goal of deterrence. Dulles, Stanford, supra, at 369, n. Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its Members. Brief for European Union as Amicus Curiae 4. In addition to the statutes cited n. Perske, People with Mental Retardation are Dying Legally, 35 Mental Retardation Feb.
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Are you of below-average, average, or above-average height? The jury has found the defendant guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt and now needs to decide about sentencing. Gossett; for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. A1 reporting that 10% of death row inmates are retarded. Second, none of the 27 polls cited disclose the targeted survey population or the sampling techniques used by those who conducted the research. In my experience, the opposite is true: being childlike generally suggests innocence rather than brutality. Finally, polling data shows a widespread consensus among Americans, even those who support the death penalty, that executing the mentally retarded is wrong.
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In Enmund, supra, at 789, we invalidated the death penalty for mere participation in a robbery in which an accomplice took a life, a punishment not permitted in 28 of the death penalty States 78%. The board concluded that Bowden understood the nature of his crime and his punishment and therefore that execution, despite his mental deficiencies, was permissible. In Coker, supra, at 595-596, we proscribed the death penalty for rape of an adult woman after finding that only one jurisdiction, Georgia, authorized such a punishment. We now know that any inference of a societal consensus rejecting the death penalty would have been mistaken. Justice Hassell and Justice Koontz dissented.
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