A forth­com­ing arti­cle by University of Miami law pro­fes­sor Scott E. Sundby in the William & Mary Bill of Rights jour­nal exam­ines the ​“unre­li­a­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ple” estab­lished by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons. The arti­cle defines the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ple as, ​“if too great a risk exists that con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed mit­i­ga­tion can­not be prop­er­ly com­pre­hend­ed and account­ed for by the sen­tencer, the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty that is cre­at­ed means that the death penal­ty can­not be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly applied.” That is, cer­tain class­es of defen­dants can be exempt from the death penal­ty because juries can­not be relied upon to ade­quate­ly assess the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors. This prin­ci­ple applied to both intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled defen­dants in Atkins and juve­nile defen­dants in Roper. Sundby argues that the prin­ci­ple should be extend­ed to men­tal­ly ill defen­dants as well. Six fac­tors that the court con­sid­ered in Atkins and Roper are iden­ti­fied, and sube­quent­ly applied to defen­dants with men­tal ill­ness­es. Among the fac­tors iden­ti­fied are the defen­dan­t’s impared abil­i­ty to assist defense attor­neys, the defen­dan­t’s impaired abil­i­ty to serve as a wit­ness, and the defen­dan­t’s dis­tort­ed decision-making skills.

Sundby goes on to say that, ​“The six Atkins-Roper fac­tors that iden­ti­fy when mit­i­ga­tion is beyond reli­able assess­ment apply to men­tal­ly ill defen­dants with equal if not greater force.” He also argues that the prin­ci­ple could be extend­ed to the death penal­ty as a whole, say­ing, ​“The rea­son­ing behind the prin­ci­ple calls into ques­tion the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the entire sys­tem in a man­ner that has not been exam­ined for decades and opens a con­sti­tu­tion­al door for the courts to begin tak­ing into account the advances over the past forty years in our under­stand­ing of the dynam­ics of human decision making.”

(S. Sundby, ​“The True Legacy of Atkins and Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, and the Death Penalty’s Unraveling,” William & Mary Bill of Rights, Vol. 23, forth­com­ing, 2014.) See Mental Illness and Law Reviews.

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