Notable (and cert-worthy?) Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on application of Atkins
This post at How Appealing alerts me to a recent ruling from Pennsylvania that providing a fitting follow-up to this recently-noted law review article discussing the challenges that lower courts are having implementing Atkins, the Supreme Court’s 2002 Eighth Amendment ruling barring the execution of mentally retarded defendants. This new article on the ruling in The Legal Intelligencer details the basics:
In a decision that may prove to be a lightning rod in the debate over Pennsylvania’s use of the death penalty, the state Supreme Court has ruled that any criminal defendant with mental impairments, short of being legally defined as “mentally retarded,” can be executed for capital offenses. A dissenting justice accused the majority of being “draconian” and warned the ruling might lead to putting mentally retarded people to death.
The justices in the 5-2 decision in Commonwealth v. Vandivner ruled that those seeking waiver of the death penalty must show records noting a defendant’s mental illness began before his or her 18th birthday — a decision Justice Max Baer labeled as problematic for certain defendants.
“To say this is troubling is an understatement,” Baer wrote in his concurring and dissenting opinion. “Many defendants, such as appellant, were not afforded the specialized expert attention, IQ tests, or adaptive assessments memorialized in school records, required by the majority to corroborate their claim of mental retardation.”
As some readers may know, states have implemented Atkins in a variety of ways (which was to be expected when the Supreme Court in Atkins expressly left it to the states to administer is broad and vague holding). Assuming cert in sought in this case, the fact that death row defendant Vandivner here had the burden to prove his retardation and the fact that this burden was applied quite stringently could draw the Justices’ attention. Or, if the Supreme Court ends up doing something notable in the capital cases of Bobby v. Bies (08-598) it took up a few weeks ago (details here), there might be some GVR juice in Vandivner.
Some related posts: