WHEN the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that “mentally retarded” persons’ diminished powers of reasoning and culpability made them ineligible for the death penalty, a dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that his six colleagues’ “newest invention” would turn “capital trial[s] into a game”. Fourteen years later, that prediction in Atkins v Virginia looks about right. But the game is a grim one, and its main players—contrary to Mr Scalia’s impression—are not prisoners “feign[ing]” retardation but die-hard supporters of capital punishment who resist the principle that executing people with intellectual disabilities amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the 8th Amendment.
On November 29th, justices heard the case of Bobby Moore, a man of limited intelligence who was sentenced to die 36 years ago for killing a store clerk during a robbery. In 2014, Mr Moore had his death sentence revoked after successfully making a claim under Atkins, but a year later the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) sent him back to death row. The question in Moore v Texas is whether the CCA used the right standard when it decided Mr...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2gtXtvC
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