## Facts

- Daryl Renard Atkins and an accomplice abducted a man, robbed him, and fatally shot him.
- A Virginia jury convicted Atkins of abduction, armed robbery, and capital murder, and sentenced him to death.
- At the penalty phase, Atkins presented expert testimony that he was “mildly mentally disabled” (now termed intellectually disabled).
- The Virginia Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing due to a misleading verdict form, but on resentencing a jury again imposed the death penalty after competing evidence on Atkins’s intellectual functioning.
- The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence and rejected Atkins’s claim that execution of an intellectually disabled person violates the Eighth Amendment, relying on then-controlling precedent.

## Issues

1. Whether executing persons with intellectual disability constitutes “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether the Eighth Amendment requires a categorical exemption from capital punishment for defendants with intellectual disability.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and remanded in a 6–3 decision (Justice Stevens).
- The Court held that executing intellectually disabled offenders is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.
- The Court concluded that contemporary standards showed a national consensus against the practice, and that the direction of change in state laws was significant.
- The Court determined that the death penalty’s justifications are weaker for this class of offenders because diminished culpability reduces retribution and limits deterrence.
- The Court emphasized an increased risk of unreliable capital sentencing for intellectually disabled defendants due to features of disability that can impair defense participation and skew jury judgments.
- The Court left to the states the development of appropriate methods to identify intellectual disability and implement the constitutional restriction.

## Legal Principles

- The Eighth Amendment prohibits punishments that are excessive and not proportioned to the offender’s culpability, assessed under “evolving standards of decency.”
- Objective indicators, especially state legislation and actual practice, inform whether a national consensus has emerged.
- Intellectual disability is associated with significant limits in intellectual functioning and adaptive skills with onset before age 18, which can diminish culpability in capital sentencing.
- The Constitution imposes a substantive limitation on a state’s power to execute intellectually disabled offenders; the exemption is categorical, not merely a mitigation factor.
- States retain primary responsibility to craft procedures and definitions to enforce the constitutional bar, subject to constitutional limits.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the Eighth Amendment categorically forbids execution of defendants with intellectual disability because such punishment is excessive in light of contemporary standards and the reduced penological justifications and reliability concerns in capital sentencing for this class of offenders.


Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002)