Edward Burns

A Racial Timeline Edward Burns

The purpose of this book is to focus on how the mental retardation/intellectual disability category is used to stigmatize and deprive children of educational opportunity, many of whom are black, and then to deny adults, many of whom are also black, lesser culpability for capital crimes as mandated by the Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002. For many black children the mental retardation/intellectual disability category has been a ready solution, incorrect as it is, to explain the effects of segregation and discrimination. Likewise for adults, States routinely re-interpret and contort the definition of intellectual disability so that the task for identifying offenders who warrant lesser culpability is very much "discretionary, haphazard, and discriminatory" (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 1972). The determination of mild Intellectual disability and the death penalty is ripe with racism. This has been the case for children "denied the opportunity of an education...made available to all on equal terms" as promised in Brown and for adults seeking Atkins relief. Hopefully, this book will provide some insight into the relationship between mild intellectual disability for children, and the many factors that should be considered when determining whether an adult offender is entitled to lesser culpability when a State seeks the death penalty.