Johnson et al. on The Aftermath of Atkins v. Virginia

Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume and Brendan Van Winkle (Cornell Law School, Cornell Law School and Independent) have posted Atkins v. Virginia at Twenty: Still Adaptive Deficits, Still in the Developmental Period (Forthcoming, Washington and Lee Law Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2022) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

 

In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court held that persons with intellectual disability could not be executed. The Court determined that imposing the ultimate punishment on individuals with intellectual disability was disproportionate and thus was cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment. But it continues to happen. This article examines how recalcitrant state courts and legislatures, relying primarily upon a single, ill-advised sentence in the Atkins decision, have created procedural and substantive obstacles that often effectively nullify the constitutional ban and how the federal courts, often equally recalcitrant, have, for the most part, refused to intervene.