The Supreme Court ruled in the Atkins v. Virginia case last Thursday, effectively outlawing the execution of the mentally retarded. The decision is being praised as a boon for civil liberties in the United States.

Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, said this ruling is an important move for the United States in line with the rest of the world.

“It brings the United States into the world community on this issue,” Stone said. “The United States was one of only four countries that allowed the execution of mentally retarded individuals, and this ruling brings us into the civilized world.”

In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled the executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual punishments and are prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

“Construing and applying the Eighth Amendment in the light of our `evolving standards of decency,’ we therefore conclude that such punishment is excessive and that the Constitution `places a substantive restriction on the State’s power to take the life’ of a mentally retarded offender,” Justice Stevens said in the written majority opinion.

Alex Tuckness, assistant professor of political science, said there is precedent in basing a decision on contemporary views.

“There have been a number of important Supreme Court cases where justices have used that rationale, but there have been other important cases where they have not,” Tuckness said.

He said the reason there was dissent in this case had to do with constitutional interpretation of originalism. Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas opposed the ruling.

“The conservative justices like Scalia dissented because the use of the death penalty has a long history and was acceptable at the time the constitution was ratified,” Tuckness said.

In a written dissent, Justice Scalia cited lack of citizen support and the majority judges’ personal opinions as influences towards his decision.

“Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate,” Scalia said in the statement. “Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.”

Tuckness said the justices in the minority hold originalist positions, meaning the justices believe in taking the meaning of the constitution as the framers intended.

“Under originalism, if the death penalty was legal then and was not cruel and unusual, than the definition of cruel and unusual should not change over time,” he said.

Tuckness said the opposing view is the belief that the framers drafted general concepts such as cruel and unusual punishment so the document could change over time.

Stone said there is more to the ruling than simply preventing mentally challenged individuals from capital punishment.

“The Supreme Court is growing increasingly respective to argument of poor processes in the application of the death penalty and we hope this is the first in a series of cases,” he said.

Stone said the ACLU’s main concern with the death penalty is that it is applied in an “unfair and arbitrary” manner and there is no way to give people due process.

“It is a very flawed system because it is made up of people and people are flawed,” he said.