Also known as: intellectually disabling · intellectual disability
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A condition of significantly subaverage intellectual functioning accompanied by deficits in adaptive behavior that originates during the developmental period. Persons with this condition possess diminished culpability and face a heightened risk of wrongful conviction, rendering them categorically ineligible for capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Igor Ito is convicted of capital murder. School and medical records document his IQ scores between 65 and 70 along with lifelong deficits in communication and daily living skills. The court determines that these facts establish intellectual disability and therefore prohibits the state from seeking the death penalty.
Irene Ingalls faces a capital trial. State law requires an IQ of 70 or below before any further evidence of intellectual disability may be considered. The court holds that this rigid threshold creates an unacceptable risk of executing a person with intellectual disability and therefore invalidates the statute as applied.
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Ivan Ivanov, convicted of capital murder, presents clinical evidence of intellectual disability. The court recognizes that the Eighth Amendment forbids execution of persons with intellectual disability and therefore vacates the death sentence regardless of the crime's severity.
No. The constitutional protection turns on the clinical diagnosis of intellectual disability established by historical records and expert testimony. Later accomplishments in a narrow field do not eliminate the overall disability that affects multiple domains of functioning.
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No. A rigid numerical cutoff creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment.
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No. The protection focuses on the existence of intellectual disability as clinically diagnosed, particularly through contemporaneous childhood documentation. Current functioning in limited contexts does not negate the categorical bar.
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It does not lower the standard. An adult is held to the ordinary reasonable-person standard regardless of intellectual disability. Only physical disabilities are incorporated into that standard.
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…614 (BREYER, J., concurring in judg- ment)? Should we no longer ensure that the State does not execute those who are seriously intellectually disabled, Atkins , 536 U. S. 304? Should we eliminate the require- ment that the manner of execution be constitutional, Baze , 553 U. S. 35, or the requirement that the inmate be men- tally…