I. INTRODUCTION In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that executing offenders with mental retardation (MR) constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment[]" (1) prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. (2) Determining whether a defendant is a person with MR is critically important because such a finding will remove the death penalty as a potential punishment. In Atkins-type cases, MR determinations are made by judges or jurors (fact finders), not mental health experts. These fact finders often do not possess specialized knowledge about MR, and the criteria they use to decide whether a defendant is a person with MR may not be consistent with the diagnostic criteria used by mental health professionals. Mental health professionals involved in Atkins-type cases have speculated that most of the general population believes "people with mental retardation have vastly lower abilities" (3) than people without MR. If this speculation is true, it is likely that fact finders will often fail to identify defendants with more moderate impairments as persons with MR, even when these impairments clearly meet diagnostic criteria for MR.
