"x x x.
Too late for those already dead, perhaps in time for those still living, the United States Supreme Court has moved at last to clarify the rules state officials must follow when determining whether capital defendants are "mentally retarded"*and thus precluded from execution under the Eighth Amendment. For over a decade, especially in the South, those rules have been manipulated by local officials and judges in ways that undermine the Court's 2002 landmark ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which banned the execution of the mentally disabled—but permitted states to define for themselves that loaded term.
The justices will reassess this long-neglected area of capital law through a Florida case that illustrates marvelously the extent to which some states will go to execute condemned prisoners, even when those prisoners are manifestly retarded. The Court agreed on Monday to hear Hall v. Florida, a case brought by a condemned man, a convicted murderer, who was declared "retarded" by the Florida courts in 1992 and again in 1999, only to be declared "un-retarded" by the Florida courts in 2009. He claims this violates his constitutional rights. He's right—and the Court should say so.
Indeed, depending upon how the justices vote, Hall v. Florida could be the first step toward an important new constitutional standard for mentally disabled defendants in capital cases. The justices have an opportunity here to establish a universal benchmark that no state may avoid under the banner of federalism or the Tenth Amendment. They also have a chance to put some mettle into their existing precedent.
x x x."
