Does the Eighth Amendment Bar Executing Mentally Retarded Prisoners Convicted of Capital Offenses?
Atkins v. Commonwealth of Virginia Docket No. 00-8452 From: The Supreme Court of Virginia Case at a Glance In 1989, the Court confronted the issue of whether the Eighth Amendment barred execution of the mentally retarded. At that time, the Court concluded that a “national consensus” against such executions had not yet emerged. Daryl Renard Atkins, a mentally retarded Virginia capital inmate with an I.Q. of 59, argues that such a consensus has now emerged and asks the Court to re-visit the issue it rejected in 1989. • Previewed by Kathy Swedlow, the deputy director of the Innocence Project and a visiting professor at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich.
