Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Sentencing Challenges after the Abolition of Execution in the United States

Abstract

In a sequence of decisions between 1989 and 2014, the United States Supreme Court grappled with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the shadow of the imposition of the death penalty on criminal offenders. In Penry v Lynaugh, 492 US 302 (1989), it jettisoned the notion of ‘mental age’ as a tool for assessing such disabilities. In Hall v Florida, 572 US (2014); 134 S Ct 1986 (2014), it abandoned the terminology of mental retardation and identified intellectual disability as existing on a spectrum, not being just an IQ number, to be determined by reference to various forms of evidence, lay and expert. In Atkins v Virginia, 536 US 304 (2002), it pronounced imposition of the death pena..