Intellectual Disability

Overview

The ques­tion of a nation­al ban on the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for those with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty was ini­tial­ly reject­ed by the United States Supreme Court in 1989, in part because at that time only a few states had adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion that pro­tect­ed this vul­ner­a­ble group of peo­ple from the death penal­ty. The Court found insuf­fi­cient evi­dence that soci­ety dis­ap­proved of the prac­tice. But just 13 years lat­er, there was a new con­sen­sus. Thirty states had either end­ed the use of the death penal­ty entire­ly, or had specif­i­cal­ly exempt­ed peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Court held that was evi­dence that soci­ety no longer sup­port­ed the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Court also not­ed the spe­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of peo­ple in this group, includ­ing the risk that they would false­ly con­fess, and con­clud­ed that the tra­di­tion­al jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of deter­rence for this group was not applicable.

At Issue

The Atkins case was a sem­i­nal moment in the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty, not only because it had the poten­tial to spare the lives of many vul­ner­a­ble defen­dants, but also because the Court’s ratio­nale pro­vid­ed a blue­print for achiev­ing oth­er lim­i­ta­tions on its use. But the Court left the crit­i­cal deci­sion of deter­min­ing who had intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty to each state — lead­ing to a patch­work of incon­sis­tent laws and prac­tices that left some peo­ple with­out the pro­tec­tion they deserved.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC traces the his­to­ry of this impor­tant rul­ing, not­ing the leg­isla­tive efforts in var­i­ous states and piv­otal cas­es. It pro­vides access to research regard­ing how many defen­dants have been found to have intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and removed from death row, and how states have com­plied with this ruling.