Prof. John Blume of Cornell University Law School has com­piled the cas­es in which an inmate’s death sen­tence was reduced because of a find­ing of men­tal retar­da­tion. His research revealed 83 such rever­sals since 2002. In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court held that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to apply the death penal­ty to defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion. The Court did not, how­ev­er, estab­lish a def­i­n­i­tion for men­tal retar­da­tion or deter­mine the pro­ce­dures for prov­ing a claim of retar­da­tion. Some states have not yet passed leg­is­la­tion to deter­mine this process. Litigation con­tin­ues six years after the Atkins deci­sion regard­ing the pos­si­ble retar­da­tion of those on death row.

Prof. Blume’s research includes the race and gen­der of the defen­dant and of the vic­tims in the under­ly­ing mur­der, the exis­tence of IQ scores where known, the lim­i­ta­tions on dai­ly func­tion­ing exhib­it­ed by the inmate, and the legal source sup­port­ing the find­ing of retardation. 

See the chart of all rever­sals. See also Mental Retardation. Posted May 30, 2008.

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