Hamm v. Smith · ¶80

This Court held that Atkins's sentence was unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. Id., at 311, 321. The Court said that the Eighth Amendment prohibits all “ `[e]xcessive' sanctions.” Id., at 311. Whether a punishment was excessive, the Court said, depended not on the “standards that prevailed . . . when the Bill of Rights was adopted,” but on the “ `evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.' ” Id., at 311–312 (quoting Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 100–101 (1958)). According to the Court, “the American public, legislators, scholars, and judges ha[d] deliberated” over whether “the death penalty should ever be imposed on a mentally retarded criminal” and decided that it should not. Atkins, 536 U. S., at 307, 313–317. The Court concluded that there was a “national consensus” against imposing the death penalty on the…

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