Opinion ID: 1060419
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Nationally

Text: The first of the factors set forth in Black , whether the punishment conforms with contemporary standards of decency, is arguably the most crucial. The United States Supreme Court emphasized in Penry that [t]he prohibitions of the Eighth Amendment are not limited ... to those practices condemned by the common law in 1789. The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments also recognizes the `evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.' Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. at 330-31, 109 S.Ct. at 2953 (citations omitted). Thus, if a punishment fails to conform with contemporary standards of decency, it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment regardless of whether it satisfies the other factors of the analysis. In defining contemporary standards of decency, a reviewing court must look to objective evidence of how our society views a particular punishment today. 492 U.S. at 331, 109 S.Ct. at 2953 (citations omitted). In Penry , the United States Supreme Court stressed that the clearest and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values is the legislation enacted by the country's legislatures. Id. When Penry was decided in 1989, only two states, Georgia and Maryland, had legislation prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded persons convicted of a capital offense. See 492 U.S. at 334, 109 S.Ct. at 2955. A majority of the Court concluded that these two states, even when added to the fourteen states that had no provisions for capital punishment, did not provide sufficient evidence ... of a national consensus. Id. The Penry Court's conclusion with regard to societal consensus based on state legislative action alone at the time was consistent with its analogous Eighth Amendment cases. In Ford v. Wainwright , for instance, the Court found a societal consensus against the execution of the insane where no state permitted such executions and twenty-six states had statutes suspending executions where a convicted defendant later became legally insane. 477 U.S. 399, 408 n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 2601 n. 2, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986). In Thompson v. Oklahoma , a plurality indicated that a societal consensus against the execution of persons under the age of 16 existed where eighteen states had statutes requiring a minimum age of 16 at the time of the offense before execution. 487 U.S. 815, 829, 108 S.Ct. 2687, 2695, 101 L.Ed.2d 702 (1988); see also Tenn.Code Ann. § 37-1-134(a)(1) (2001) (a minor defendant under the age of 18 at the time of the offense who is transferred to criminal court for trial as an adult is not subject to the death penalty for that offense). In sum, the two states prohibiting execution of mentally retarded persons in 1989 did not create the consensus found by members of the Court in both Ford and Thompson . It is immediately apparent, however, that the legislative landscape following Penry has undergone a dramatic transformation. Since the decision, no fewer than sixteen statesArizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washingtonhave joined Georgia and Maryland in enacting legislation prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded individuals. [14] The federal government likewise passed legislation prohibiting such executions. [15] The majority of these jurisdictions enacted the legislation prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded persons following the Penry decision. Jonathan L. Bing, Protecting the Mentally Retarded From Capital Punishment: State Efforts Since Penry and Recommendations for the Future, 22 N.Y.U. Rev. L & Soc. Change 59, 116 (1996). Five statesArizona, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolinaenacted the legislation after the United States Supreme Court indicated in McCarver v. North Carolina, 532 U.S. 941, 121 S.Ct. 1401, 149 L.Ed.2d 344 (2001), that it would reconsider Penry and the issue of whether a standard of decency marking a mature society has evolved against the execution of the mentally retarded. When these nineteen jurisdictions are considered along with the twelve states that do not have provisions for capital punishment, thirty-one jurisdictions now do not permit the execution of mentally retarded persons. In addition to legislative enactments, other evidence supports the conclusion that execution of the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment. The United States Supreme Court, for example, has identified data concerning the actions of sentencing juries as another relevant measure of contemporary standards of decency. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. at 331, 109 S.Ct. at 2953. Although the data concerning capital jury sentencing tendencies is limited, the information available suggests that the punishment is no longer favored by jurors. The Capital Juror Project, a South Carolina jury study which this Court has relied upon in the past, [16] found that jurors in capital cases attached significant mitigating potential to evidence that the defendant was mentally retarded. Stephen P. Garvey, Aggravation and Mitigation in Capital Cases: What do Jurors Think?, 98 Colum. L.Rev. 1538, 1539 (1998). In fact, [e]vidence that the defendant was mentally retarded was almost as powerful as lingering doubt over his guilt, with nearly 75 percent of the jurors surveyed, noting that evidence of mental retardation would make them less likely to vote for death. See id. at 1564. Although similar studies have not yet been conducted in Tennessee, the authors of the South Carolina study note that the available data suggest [that] ... South Carolina jurors appear to think much like jurors from several other states taken in the aggregate. Id. at 1540. Thus, though not conclusive, this study assuredly lends weight to the assertion that jurors view execution of the mentally retarded as repugnant to today's standards of decency. Moreover, other evidence that mentally retarded persons should not be executed abounds. The execution of the mentally retarded has been condemned by numerous professional organizations involved in the treatment of mentally retarded individuals, including the American Association on Mental Retardation, the Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, the American Association of University Affiliated Programs for the Developmentally Disabled, the National Association of Private Residential Resources, the New York Association for Retarded Children, Inc., the National Association of Superintendents of Public Residential Facilities for the Mentally Retarded, the Mental Health Law Project, and the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems. See Lyn Entzeroth, Putting the Mentally Retarded Criminal Defendant to Death: Charting the Development of a National Consensus to Exempt the Mentally Retarded from the Death Penalty, 52 Ala. L.Rev. 911, nn. 8, 9 (2001) (with accompanying text). The American Bar Association, which is composed of over 400,000 members representing a large cross-section of the modern legal community, also opposes the execution of the mentally retarded. See generally Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker, Defending Categorical Exemptions to the Death Penalty: Reflections on the ABA's Resolutions Concerning the Execution of Juveniles and Persons with Mental Retardation, 61 Law & Contemp. Probs. 89 (1998). Finally, public opinion polls have repeatedly shown that, even among death penalty advocates, there is scant support for executing the mentally retarded. [17] When this evidence is viewed in conjunction with the legislative enactments and jury studies discussed above, the conclusion is compelling: executing the mentally retarded is considered cruel and unusual punishment by numerous facets of contemporary society. Thus, there exists today evidence of a substantial societal change in attitude since 1989 and, in our opinion, that evidence warrants a different conclusion. See Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. at 408, 106 S.Ct. at 2601. [18]