05. June 2007: Death Penalty - Mentally Retarded

The death penalty issue is almost too vast to narrow to a single sub-issue, but in this forum, it seems appropriate, and thus, the question of whether the death penalty should be used against the insane and mentally retarded.

In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986), the Unites States Supreme Court considered the death penalty as to an insane person. It found that consideration must be given to "objective evidence of contemporary values", as well as "the kinds of punishments that were considered cruel and unusual at the time that the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1789". The Court recognized that ...More

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