Supreme Court: Death Penalty and the Retarded
NPR's Nina Totenberg reports that the Supreme Court has reversed a previous ruling and declared it unconstitutional to execute a mentally retarded person. The court had ruled in 1989 that there was no national consensus that executing the retarded was cruel and unusual punishment. Now the court has ruled 6-3 that there is such a consensus. Eighteen states currently prohibit executing the retarded, and the majority opinion notes a consistent trend in that direction.