Opinion ID: 148908
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Hill's Cooper Argument

Text: Hill relies on Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 116 S.Ct. 1373, 134 L.Ed.2d 498 (1996), which held that an Oklahoma law requiring a defendant to prove incompetence to stand trial by clear and convincing evidenceviolated the Due Process Clause. Id. at 366-69, 116 S.Ct. at 1383-84. The Georgia Supreme Court concluded that the insanity cases of Leland and Ford are more comparable to mental retardation than is the incompetency issue in Cooper. See Hill III, 587 S.E.2d at 621-22. First, Cooper emphasized that (1) the Supreme Court had historically and consistently recognized that the criminal trial of an incompetent defendant violates due process; and (2) the historical common-law standard of proof for incompetency in both English and American cases was preponderance of the evidence. Cooper, 517 U.S. at 354-56, 116 S.Ct. at 1376-77. In contrast, there is no historical Eighth Amendment right of a mentally retarded person not to be executed. And since the constitutional right itself is new, there is no historical tradition regarding the burden of proof as to that right. As recently as 1989, Penry refused to bar the execution of the mentally retarded. Even Atkins was based not on historical tradition or the Due Process Clause, but on the contemporary national consensus that reflected the evolving standards of decency that informed the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Atkins, 536 U.S. at 311-12, 122 S.Ct. at 2247. Indeed, Georgia's reasonable doubt standard for establishing a mental retardation exception to the death penalty, at twenty-two years old, is the oldest such law in the nation. Although other states recently have employed either clear-and-convincing-evidence or preponderance-of-evidence standards, no more lenient standard of proof predates Georgia's. Thus, Cooper 's due process analysis does not help Hill.