ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the United States Supreme Court's rulings that established the categorical exclusion from the death penalty for intellectually disabled offenders and the constitutional basis to delay the carrying out of a death sentence on "insane" offenders, as well as their implementation by this country's capital punishment jurisdictions. In Atkins v. Virginia, the Court concluded that the imposition of a death sentence on an intellectually disabled offender is also unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. American capital punishment states widely adopted the common law prohibition of the execution of "insane" offenders, but, prior to the Court's decision in Ford v. Wainwright, few states defined insanity in this context, and procedures for determining insanity varied widely. In Ford, the Court addressed a federal collateral review proceeding involving a Florida offender who began to manifest delusional behavior several years after his capital proceeding.
