In 1998, Daryl Atkins was sentenced by a jury to death on account of capital murder charges as well as armed robbery and abduction. In response, Atkins appealed the ruling of the trial court on the ground that sentencing a mentally retarded criminal to death was a cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Prior to Atkins, in 1989, merely 13 years earlier, the United States Supreme Court ruled the Eighth Amendment does not categorically prohibit the execution of mentally retarded capital murderers in the case Penry v Lynaugh (“Penry v Lynaugh”). The verdict of this case gave state legislatures the ability to decide whether to adopt the death penalty or not, however, the United States Supreme Court limited the states' ability to execute. States are prohibited from executing minors and the insane; for reason that, these defendants' diminished capacity for reasoned judgment limits their culpability. Yet, the Supreme Court case, Atkins v Virginia, challenged the constitutionality in executing the mentally retarded, ultimately revisiting the limitation verdict of Penry v Lynaugh. The legal …show more content…
Lynaugh Supreme Court case precedent. During resentencing the forensic psychologist, Dr. Evan Nelson testified. His conclusion was based on interviews with people who knew Atkins, a review of school and court records, and the administration of a standard intelligence test which indicated that Atkins had a full scale IQ of 59.5. According to Melusky and Pesto, “IQ’s lower than 70 are generally considered in the mildly mentally retarded range. An IQ of 59 placed Atkins in the lowest one percentile in intelligence.” Despite this, the State rejected Atkins' intelligence score, the jury again sentenced Atkins to death. The Virginia Supreme Court relied on the holding in Penry v. Lynaugh, when rejecting Atkins' contention that he could not be sentenced to death because he is mentally retarded (Oyez