With mental retardation come disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgement and control of one‘s impulses. These facts bring up the question of can a person mentally
retarded be held fully responsible for his or her actions? In June 2002, the supreme
court ruled in the Atkins V. Virginia case that the execution of the mentally retarded was a violation to the eighth amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment. in 1984, Earl Washington, a man with an lQ of a 10 year old child because of his mental disabilities,