Entries tagged with “Atkins v. Virginia”
Issues
Aug 02, 2024
Disability Pride Month Series: How Mitigation Specialists Help Protect Intellectually Disabled Defendants
In honor of Disability Pride Month (July), the Death Penalty Information Center posted a weekly feature highlighting issues related to the death penalty and disability and profiles of individuals who have played key roles in changing the laws to protect prisoners with disabilities. This final post focuses on the role of mitigation specialists. Capital mitigation specialists assist defense attorneys when preparing for capital trials and post-conviction appeals by conducting a thorough…
Issues
Jul 23, 2024
Disability Pride Month Series: Daryl Atkins, Death-Sentenced Prisoner Whose Case Resulted in New Legal Protections for People with Intellectual Disability
This July, in honor of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is posting a weekly feature highlighting issues related to the death penalty and disability and profiles of individuals who have played key roles in changing the laws to protect prisoners with disabilities. Daryl Atkins (pictured) became a pivotal figure in the American legal landscape in 2002 due to his role as the named prisoner in a landmark Supreme Court case concerning whether those who have intellectual…
Issues
Jul 15, 2024
Disability Pride Month Series: “National Treasure” Professor James W. Ellis
This July, in honor of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is posting a weekly feature highlighting issues related to the death penalty and disability and profiles of individuals who have played key roles in changing the laws to protect prisoners with disabilities. Distinguished Professor of Law James W. Ellis has spent his career defending the rights of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), including arguing the landmark case Atkins v.
Issues
Apr 01, 2024
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Removes Henderson County Man from Death Row Citing Intellectual Disability
On March 27, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) resentenced death row prisoner Randall Mays to life in prison without the possibility of parole after an expert for the state conceded that the evidence presented by Mr. Mays’ attorneys indicates he is intellectually disabled, and thus ineligible for the death penalty. Originally sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of two Henderson County, Texas, sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Mays’ attorneys have long argued that he should be exempt…
Issues
Nov 15, 2023
Randomness and Prosecutorial Misconduct in Death Penalty Cases Highlighted in South Carolina
A recent article in the Post and Courier details research into the reasons why 18 death sentences have been overturned in South Carolina, finding one of the main reasons to be prosecutorial misconduct. Research found that 11 of the 18 prisoners received new sentences because of prosecutorial misconduct, while the other seven received new sentences after the decision in Atkins v. Virginia because they had intellectual disability. The Post and Courier’s research indicates that four of the 18 men…
Issues
Mar 02, 2023
MENTAL ILLNESS: Excluding Those with Severe Mental Illness from the Death Penalty — A Menu of Legislative Options
In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice regarding limitations on the death penalty for those with diminished responsibility, Richard Bonnie summarizes the reasons why an exclusion for severe mental illness in capital cases is needed and examines key drafting issues that can be expected to arise in state legislatures. Bonnie was a member on the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty, which was established in 2003 after…
Issues
Oct 07, 2022
Atkins at 20: Assessing the Purported Ban on Executing Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
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 violation of the Eighth Amendment. Twenty years later, however, “there is not just the risk, but the certainty” that states continue to sentence intellectually disabled defendants to death, three legal scholars argue, and the federal courts are letting them get away with it. Cornell…
Issues
Jun 11, 2021
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds ‘Uniquely High and Onerous’ Burden of Proving Intellectual Disability in Death Penalty Cases
The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory requirement that a capital defendant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is intellectually disabled before being declared ineligible for the death penalty. In an 8 – 1 ruling issued on June 1, 2021, the Georgia high court affirmed the conviction and death sentence imposed on Rodney Young. Young had argued that requiring a capital defendant to meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard — the…
Issues
Feb 16, 2018
Is Racially Biased Testimony Wrongly Subjecting Intellectually Disabled Defendants to the Death Penalty?
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia categorically bars states from executing any person who has Intellectual Disability. (Daryl Atkins is pictured.) However, as reported in recent stories in Pacific Standard Magazine and the newspaper, The Atlanta Black Star, some states have attempted to circumvent the Atkins ruling by using social stereotypes and race as grounds to argue that defendants of color are not intellectually disabled. Prosecutors in at least eight states…
Issues
May 19, 2017
STUDY: Juries Have Never Found Anyone Intellectually Disabled Under Georgia’s Insurmountable Standard of Proof
No death penalty jury has ever found a defendant charged with intentional murder to be ineligible for the death penalty under Georgia’s intellectual disability law, according to a new empirical study published in Georgia State University Law Review. The study, by Georgia State Law Professor Lauren Sudeall Lucas, examined 30 years of jury verdicts under the state’s Guilty But Mentally Retarded statute, which has the most onerous standard in the nation for proving intellectual disability.