Page:Tim Shoop, Warden v. Danny Hill.pdf/4

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
4
SHOOP v. HILL

Per Curiam

(2011). We therefore consider what was clearly established regarding the execution of the intellectually disabled in 2008, when the Ohio Court of Appeals rejected Hill’s Atkins claim.

Of course, Atkins itself was on the books, but Atkins gave no comprehensive definition of “mental retardation” for Eighth Amendment purposes.[1] The opinion of the Court noted that the definitions of mental retardation adopted by the American Association on Mental Retardation and the American Psychiatric Association required both “subaverage intellectual functioning” and “significant limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, and self-direction that became manifest before age 18.” 536 U. S., at 318; see also id., at 308, n. 3 (quoting definitions). The Court also noted that state statutory definitions of mental retardation at the time “[were] not identical, but generally conform[ed] to the[se] clinical definitions.” Id., at 317, n. 22. The Court then left “ ‘to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction’ ” that the Court adopted. Id., at 317 (quoting Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399, 416 (1986) (plurality opinion)).

More than a decade later, we expounded on the definition of intellectual disability in two cases. In Hall v. Florida, 572 U. S. 701 (2014), we considered a rule restricting Atkins to defendants with “an IQ test score of 70 or less.” 572 U. S., at 704. We held that this rule violated the Eighth Amendment because it treated an IQ score higher than 70 as conclusively disqualifying and thus prevented consideration of other evidence of intellectual disability, such as evidence of “deficits in adaptive functioning over [the defendant’s] lifetime.” Id., at 724.

———————

  1. The Court explained that it was “fair to say that a national consensus” had developed against the execution of “mentally retarded” offenders. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S., 304, 316 (2002).