This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the death penalty in Texas. Since the U.S. made the death penalty legal again in 1976, Texas has been responsible for more than a third of the prisoners executed in America.
And, as The New Yorker reports, Texas has often put to death prisoners who would have been deemed exempt in other parts of the country due to intellectual disability.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that, no matter how heinous the crime, an intellectually disabled person cannot be sentenced to death. The court maintained that because those with intellectual disabilities don’t have the full capacity to reason through their actions, they can’t be held to the same level of responsibility as others. Texas responded by instituting standards for intellectual disability that are far looser than anywhere else in the country.
Whether this will remain the case is now in the hands of the eight jurors sitting on the nation’s High Court.