Capital Punishment Essay: Retardation and Capital Punishment

Retardation and Capital Punishment One merchantman agree (or not) with the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that the final stage penalty should not apply to retarded citizens because it violates the Eighth Amendments prohibition against uncivilised and preposterous punishment, and still be troubled by the twisted alley the court took to reach its destination. Reading the history of the Eighth Amendment shows that it proceeded from concerns over the methods the subject could use to take the life of a convicted criminal -- not the cognizance level of the criminal. When the Constitution was adopted, the British penalty for high treason was to rush the convicted person hanged by the neck and whence cut down alive, then he was disemboweled while yet living. His head was cut off and his carcass divided into four parts for disposition by the King(Norton). Among punishments for new(prenominal) crimes, English law provided for cutting off the ears, flogging, cutting off hand s, castrating, stand up in the pillory, slitting of the nose and branding on the cheek. Now THAT was cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court, in its decision, said that persons deemed retarded -- with an IQ of 70 or less -- and judged guilty of a capital crime, cannot be executed. In so rul... ...Retarded citizens who do not know right from wrong should be exempted from the goal penalty -- but not given blanket absolution by a Supreme Court, which has relied in this latest of many recent rulings not on the Constitution, but on a preferred vector sum. Such argumentation will come back to haunt us in situations where the outcome is less desirable. WORKS CITED Atkins v Virginia. http//supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-8452.ZS.html Norton, Thomas James. The Constitution of the joined States, p. 224. Trop v. Dulles. http//sunsite.berkeley.edu/meiklejohn/meik-1_4/index.html