ANTONIN SCALIA warned fifteen years ago that prohibiting the execution of intellectually disabled criminals as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment would turn “capital trial[s] into a game” where defendants would “feign” mental retardation in order to escape the ultimate punishment. The prediction has not been borne out. Instead, Atkins v Virginia, the 2002 ruling from which Mr Scalia dissented, has been gamed by states determined to execute low-IQ individuals. In 2014, in Hall v Florida, the Sunshine state was scolded by the Supreme Court for inappropriately interpreting IQ tests. Now another recalcitrant state has now been chastened by a 5-3 vote. In Moore v Texas, announced on March 28th, the justices have told the Lone Star state that its resistance to medical science has no place in death-penalty jurisprudence.
The case centres on Bobby James Moore, then 20, who was sentenced to die in 1980 after fatally shooting a grocery store clerk during a botched burglary in Houston. The crime was a violent capstone to a tragic childhood. Mr Moore repeated...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2oynQDB
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