Policy Issues
It is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty upon individuals with intellectual disability. But poor legal representation and onerous evidentiary requirements still result in death sentences and executions of intellectually disabled defendants.
Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty, With Law Professor John Blume
While stopping short of abolishing the death penalty, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken measures to limit its applicability so that it is used primarily in cases where the defendant had the most culpability. People with intellectual disability are not in that group. Occasionally, states, too, determined that the death penalty could be too harsh as applied to some defendants, and many passed laws exempting people with limited intellectual ability from the death penalty.
The mental health community has provided clear criteria for a finding of intellectual disability: significant limitation in intellectual ability and adaptive behavior, manifesting itself prior to the age of 18.
Although the question of a national ban on the use of capital punishment for those with intellectual disability was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1989 because so few states had taken action on their own, the issue re-emerged in 2002 with a new consensus. Thirty states had either ended the use of the death penalty entirely, or at least for those with intellectual disabilities. In Atkins v. Virginia, the Court held that the nation’s standards of decency had evolved to the point where no such executions should occur. It also concluded that there was little if any deterrent or retributive effect from executing such defendants.
The Atkins case was a seminal moment in the history of the death penalty, not only because it spared the lives of a vulnerable class of defendants, but it also provided a blueprint for achieving other limitations on the practice, or even for eliminating it altogether. Even after the Court’s decision in 2002, some states continued to use arcane practices in the determination of intellectual disability, so further supervision has been required.
DPIC traces the history of this important ruling, noting the legislative efforts in various states and the pivotal cases that brought this issue to the fore. It provides access to some of the research regarding how many defendants with intellectual disability have been removed from death row and how states apply this ruling at differing times during the process leading up to sentencing.
Intellectual Disability
Mar 08, 2023
A Grayson County, Texas court has withdrawn the April 5, 2023 execution date for Andre Thomas (pictured), a seriously mentally ill prisoner whose legal team requested more time to demonstrate that Thomas is incompetent to be executed. While incarc…
Intellectual Disability
Feb 24, 2023
In an op-ed in The Tennessean, Dr. Keith Caruso, President of the Tennessee Psychiatric Association, shared the reasons behind the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) opposition to capital punishment for those with severe mental illness. …
Intellectual Disability
Feb 20, 2023
The cases of two defendants facing imminent execution raise concerns about the appropriateness of death sentences for those with severe mental illness or sharply-limiting mental disabilities. Andre Thomas is scheduled for execution on April 5, 2…
Intellectual Disability
Nov 17, 2022
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office attempted to preserve a trial court ruling denying Byron Black’s intellectual disability claim, arguing before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) on November 8. …
Innocence
Oct 28, 2022
Two-thirds of Black women and more than half of Black men have been struck from jury service in Duval County death penalty cases, more than double the rate at which white prospective jurors are excluded, a study of capital jury se…
Intellectual Disability
Oct 07, 2022
In its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability constituted cruel and unusual punishment in viola…
Arbitrariness
Sep 13, 2022
An Alabama appeals court has upheld a fifth non-unanimous death sentence imposed on a death-row prisoner who has faced six capital sentencing trials for the same offense and was once found to be ineligible for the death penalty be…
Innocence
Aug 09, 2022
Tennessee voters have issued a stunning rebuke to controversial Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich (pictured), ousting her from office after an eleven-year tenure marred by charges of racism and m…
Arbitrariness
Jun 22, 2022
On the twentieth anniversary of its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia prohibiting the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that c…
Intellectual Disability
Jun 08, 2022
A Tennessee death-row prisoner who county prosecutors agree is intellectually disabled is appealing a trial judge’s refusal to vacate his death sentence under a law designed to provide condemned prisoners a mechanism to enforce th…
