Penry v. Lynaugh

The Court struck down Penry's conviction and sentence in a 5-4 vote. Although they agreed on an outcome, in part because they were obliged to consider two questions, the justices could not agree on an opinion. Justice O'Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered two separate opinions of the Court. In the first, she stated the reasons for reversing Penry's death sentence. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the case which reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty, the Court mandated that mitigating circumstances be reviewed in each capital case. Here again, the Court stressed the importance of this requirement:

In order to ensure "reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case," [Quoting Woodson v. North Carolina (1976)], the jury must be able to consider and give effect to any mitigating evidence relevant to a defendant's background and character or the circumstances of the crime.

Because at Penry's trial the judge had failed to instruct the jury specifically that they could consider mitigating circumstances, Penry's constitutional rights had been violated. His death sentence was overturned.

The justices were even more divided with the regard to the constitutionality, in general, of sentencing the mentally retarded to death for capital crimes. While upholding their decision in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) that execution of an insane person is cruel and unusual punishment, they nevertheless held now that mental retardation was not, of itself, a violation of the Eighth Amendment. While stressing that diminished mental capacity was a mitigating factor and admitting that severe retardation may result in acquittal in capital cases, the Court said that not all mentally retarded people who share Penry's level of awareness lack the capacity to appreciate their crimes. Such was the consensus among the framers of the Constitution, and such was the consensus in today's society:

[A]t present, there is insufficient evidence of a national consensus against executing mentally retarded people convicted of capital offenses for us to conclude that it is categorically prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.