Amnesty report condemns 'disgraceful' US executions of mentally ill
As many as 10 percent of prisoners executed in the US over the past 30 years suffered from some form of mental illness, according to a report issued Tuesday by Amnesty International . In a call for...
High court rules against automatic jury determination of mental retardation
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that death row inmates do not have an automatic right to a jury trial to determine whether or not an inmate is mentally retarded and therefore ineligible...
States brief ~ OR Supreme Court rules regulation that bars logging not "taking"
Leading Thursday's states brief, the Oregon Supreme Court has denied a timber company state compensation after the company was barred from logging trees around a bald eagle's nest by ruling today that state wildlife regulation of private...
Jury must decide fate of mentally retarded man at center of Supreme Court decision
Jury selection began today for the competency trial of Daryl Atkins, the plaintiff in the 2002 Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia that abolished the death penalty for the severely mentally retarded by...
JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego notes that with the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Roper v. Simmons, the United States has finally joined the community of nations that says the state-sanctioned...
Douglas Berman :"When the Supreme Court declared in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the Court punted a number of tough administrative...
