Thirteen years ago in 1989, the Court decision in Penry v. Lynaugh "permitted the execution of mentally retarded capital offenders provided that judges and juries consider their mental capacities when deciding the sentence" (Reed, 1993)
¶ … Legal to Execute Mentally Retarded Is it Legal to Execute a Mentally Retarded Person? In June 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled (6 to 3) that mentally retarded people cannot be executed. Thirteen years ago, a closely divided Court ruled that executing the retarded was not cruel and unusual punishment because only two states had barred the practice at that time, however at the time of the new ruling, eighteen states had banned the death penalty for the retarded, and that number combined with the twelve states that do not allow the death penalty at all, means that a majority of the states do not execute the retarded (Hansen; Siegel 2002)
Thus, execution of the mentally retarded is not only illegal, but immoral as well. Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn of Amnesty International wants to expand this logic to include the mentally ill, stating, "Severely mentally ill people are not the worst of the worst" (Weigl 2006)
INTERVENTIONS The past 15 years have witnessed tremendous changes in the support and education of those who are disabled including those who have severe mental retardation. One of the biggest changes that have taken place is the desire to broaden the goals that were formerly very simple (Horner, 1997)
Historically the mentally retarded were institutionalized and forgotten but the last 15 years have changed their lives dramatically. While there are currently several options available to families of the mentally retarded it is not something that can be decided without constant and recurring review and assessment to be sure the plan in place is still the best plan for the education, training and happiness of the person in question (Davern, 1997)
In Pearl Buck's The Child Who Never Grew the author provided the reader with an insight to how far the education and training and treatment of the severely mentally retarded as come. Her daughter, born in 1920 was fortunate to have a caring, strong mother, but even then societal shunning and expectations for her treatment were a powerful force (Buck, 1992)
Analysts have assessed Cruz's IQ as between 64 and 76. Cruz, however, repeatedly told reporters that although he was "slow in reading, slow in learning," he was not mentally retarded (Bonner and Rimer)
" This makes them particularly susceptible to making false confessions during interrogation. It also hampers them from seeking help based on their disability, including from their own lawyers (Edgerton 22-25)
In addition, because a mentally retarded person generally cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions, it is unlikely that the death penalty will deter the commission of capital crimes. If mentally retarded offenders were excluded from the death penalty, other capital offenders will still be liable (Ellis and Fiorenza 186)
Furthermore, they argue that the state or federal government should not impose its own standards of mental retardation on a Texas jury. The question of whether a person's mental handicaps constitute mitigating circumstances in sentencing should be debated by the citizens of Texas (Herasimchuk 190)
If an IQ test is administered properly, a person who scores below 70 ranks in the bottom two percent of the American population and is deemed significantly below average in terms of intellectual function. As such, a person with an IQ below 70 meets the primary condition for determining mental retardation (Reed 14)