This week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral argument in the case of Brumfield v. Cain, a death penalty case coming out of Louisiana and filed by Death Row inmate Kevan Brumfield.
The crux of the case is how someone is determined to be mentally disabled and therefore, not subject to capital punishment and the death penalty under the federal constitution.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the High Court has considered this issue; it’s a complex legal question that the Supreme Court has considered in earlier, landmark cases like Atkins v. Virginia, where it found that convicted individuals who are “mentally retarded” cannot be executed because this would violate the Eighth Amendment’s bar against cruel and unusual punishment.
In Brumfield, the question isn’t whether or not someone with severe mental disability can be executed — it’s whether or not the means that the State of Louisiana has in place to determine whether or not the person is mentally disabled, and therefore protected by this Eighth Amendment bar, past constitutional muster.
Brumfield Questions Presented
(1) Whether a state court that considers the evidence presented at a petitioner’s penalty phase proceeding as determinative of the petitioner’s claim of mental retardation under Atkins v. Virginia has based its decision on an unreasonable determination of facts under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2); and
(2) whether a state court that denies funding to an indigent petitioner who has no other means of obtaining evidence of his mental retardation has denied petitioner his “opportunity to be heard,” contrary to Atkins and Ford v. Wainwright and his constitutional right to be provided with the “basic tools” for an adequate defense, contrary to Ake v. Oklahoma.