Supreme court bans execution of low-IQ convicts

Opponents of the death penalty in the US won a major victory yesterday when the supreme court ruled by six votes to three that it was unconstitutional to execute those with learning difficulties. The decision reversed a previous vote taken 13 years ago.

The justices said it was relevant that national opinion had changed. In 1989, only two of the 38 states that allow capital punishment banned the practice; now 18 do. A further 12 do not employ the death penalty.

"We are not persuaded that the execution of mentally retarded criminals will measurably advance the deterrent or the retributive purpose of the death penalty," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote. "The practice has become unusual and it is fair to say that a national consensus has developed against it."

But those against the decision were unusually vehement. They included both the chief justice, William Rehnquist, and the man considered his likely successor, Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia said: "Seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members."

Anti-execution campaigners were jubilant. "We have stopped a practice that most Americans and the rest of the world find abhorrent," said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Centre.

The arguments rested on interpretations of the eighth amendment, which bans "cruel and unusual punishment". The supreme court decided in 1972 that all executions violated that amendment, but it reversed the ruling in 1976.

It remains unclear how many of the 3,700 prisoners on death row in the US will be affected by yesterday's ruling.

The case before the court involved Daryl Atkins, who was sentenced to death in Virginia in 1996 for abducting and murdering a motorist . Atkins was said to have an IQ of 59.

The decision came too late to resolve several other controversial cases. Tony Cruz was executed in Texas in August 2000, although his IQ was reportedly 63. President George Bush, the state governor at the time, has now come out against executing such people.

Another man, Earl Washington, admitted raping and murdering a teenage mother in Virginia in 1984. He remained in jail for 17 years, mostly on death row, before being pardoned. Campaigners said all along that police had taken advantage of his mental incapacity to force him to confess.

Yesterday's decision did not address the issue of capital punishment in general, where the supreme court regularly rejects individual appeals.

There is, however, a slow but perceptible trend against executions. They peaked at 99 in 1999, but fell to 66 last year. There have been 33 so far this year, 16 of them in Texas. Illinois and Maryland, have suspended all executions after mounting bad publicity over alleged injustices. The electric chair was used for the last time six weeks ago in Alabama and it is almost certain that all future executions in the US will be conducted by the less emotive method of lethal injection.