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Highlighting the Atkins Scholarship

By Steve Hall

In the preceding post, Adam Liptak noted scholarship by John Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, and Christopher Seeds,"An Empirical Look at Atkins vs. Virginia and its Application in Capital Cases."  Here's the abstract:In Atkins vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared that evolving standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment prohibit the death penalty for individuals with intellectual disability (formerly, "mental retardation"). Both supporters and opponents of the categorical exemption, however, have criticized the Atkins opinion. The Atkins dissent, for example, urged that the decision would open the gates of litigation to a flood of frivolous claims. Another prominent criticism, heard from those more supportive of the Court's ruling, has been that the language the Court used communicating that states must "generally conform" to the clinical definitions of mental retardation is ambiguous enough to permit states to stray from the clinical definitions and, consequently, for death eligibility to vary depending upon the jurisdiction in which a defendant is charged...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on November 23, 2009 (boomark / email).