Capital Punishment Essay: Retardation and Capital Punishment

Retardation and Capital Punishment      Ã‚  Ã‚   One can agree (or not) with the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that the death penalty should not apply to retarded citizens because it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment," and still be troubled by the twisted road the court took to reach its destination. Reading the history of the Eighth Amendment shows that it proceeded from concerns over the methods the state could use to take the life of a convicted criminal -- not the intelligence level of the criminal.    When the Constitution was adopted, the British penalty for high treason was to have the convicted person "hanged by the neck and then cut down alive, then he was disemboweled while yet living. His head was cut off and his body divided into four parts for disposition by the King"(Norton). Among punishments for other crimes, English law provided for cutting off the ears, flogging, cutting off hands, castrating, standing in the pillory, slitting of the nose and branding on the cheek. Now THAT was cruel and unusual punishment.    The Supreme Court, in its decision, said that persons deemed retarded -- with an IQ of 70 or less -- and judged guilty of a capital crime, cannot be executed. In so rul... ...Retarded citizens who do not know right from wrong should be exempted from the death penalty -- but not given blanket absolution by a Supreme Court, which has relied in this latest of many recent rulings not on the Constitution, but on a preferred outcome. Such "reasoning" will come back to haunt us in situations where the outcome is less desirable.      WORKS CITED:    Atkins v Virginia. http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-8452.ZS.html    Norton, Thomas James. "The Constitution of the United States," p. 224.    Trop v. Dulles. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/meiklejohn/meik-1_4/index.html