Kinder, gentler, and more capricious: The death penalty after Atkins v. Virginia

This note examines the current state of death penalty jurisprudence after the Supreme Court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. It concludes that there is no basis for the Court's recent attempt to exempt entire classes from the death penalty, and shows that such exemptions violate the tenets of the Eighth Amendment as enunciated by the Court in Furman v. Georgia, and the spirit of that amendment as embodied in those cases following Furman. It begins with a background discussion of the Eighth Amendment and its application to death penalty cases, with emphasis on the requirements mandated by the Eighth Amendment after Furman. It then analyzes the Court's recent jurisprudence regarding the death penalty as imposed on the mentally retarded and on juveniles and argues that the Court's approach to these problems is fundamentally inconsistent with its Eighth Amendment death penalty jurisprudence. Finally, it proposes a number of alternative approaches to the problems posed by the mentally retarded and juveniles who commit capital crimes.