Foreword
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it was unconstitutional for States to apply the death penalty to the mentally retarded. In its decision, the Court held that such executions constituted "cruel and unusual punishment," which is proscribed in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.The Atkins decision effectively reversed an earlier Court ruling in Pembry v. Lynaugh (1989). The Court justified this change of direction by citing its 1958 case, Trop v. Dulles, in which Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that the definition of "cruel" was dependent on the "evolving standards of decency that…
