The interest in State Legislatures in the topic of mental retardation and the death penalty has obviously heightened with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia, 122 S.Ct. 2242 (June 20, 2002). The purpose of this document is to provide legislators and advocates with guidance in implementing the Atkins decision, so that each State’s death penalty legislation is in full...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of death qualification in venirepersons' evaluations of expert scientific testimony in capital trials. 200 venirepersons from the 12th Judicial Circuit in Bradenton, FL completed a booklet that contained the following: one question that measured their attitudes toward the death penalty; one question that categorized their death-qualification...

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant's abnormal...

One of the longest running questions that has been regularly included in U.S. national public opinion polls is “Are you in favor of the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?” Because the death penalty is governed by state laws rather than federal laws, it is of special interest to know how public opinion varies by state, and how it has changed over time within each state. In this paper...

Within a prolonged-exposure, delayed-measurement paradigm, respondents consumed films that featured no violence, old-style violence, gratuitous violence, or horror. Both male and female respondents had been classified as low vs high in psychoticism weeks prior to consumption. Delayed measures were: (1) the acceptance of violence as a means of conflict resolution; (2) crime apprehension; (3) eva...

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first ...

Adamson Muula The article by Skene [1] has touched on an important topic in as far as global health research is concerned. Skene’s barometer is certainly a critical contribution to the discourse in research ethics that could be used in both extra-territorial and intra-territorial research. There are, however, several areas where I feel a different opinion would enrich the discussion. My fi rst ...

Over the last century, IQ scores have been steadily rising, a phenomenon dubbed the Flynn effect. Because of the Flynn effect, IQ tests are periodically renormed, making them harder. Given that eligibility for mental retardation (MR) services relies heavily on IQ scores, renormed tests could have a significant impact on MR placements. In longitudinal IQ records from 9 sites around the country, ...

Anatomical science has used the bodies of the executed for dissection over many centuries. As anatomy has developed into a vehicle of not only scientific but also moral and ethical education, it is important to consider the source of human bodies for dissection and the manner of their acquisition. From the thirteenth to the early seventeenth century, the bodies of the executed were the only leg...

Bernard Diamond would testify only for the defense in criminal cases, but only if the whole psychiatric truth would be introduced during a trial and the facts of the case supported the defense position. Otherwise, he would refuse to participate. Although few other forensic psychiatrists have personal or professional ethical concerns regarding ever participating for the prosecution, many more ha...