Brumfield v. Cain (576 U.S. 305)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 18, 2015 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 576 U.S. 305 · 135 S. Ct. 2269
- Decided
- June 18, 2015
- Term
- October Term 2014
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Sotomayor
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice SOTOMAYORdelivered the opinion of the Court. In Atkins v. Virginia,536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002), this Court recognized that the execution of the intellectually disabled contravenes the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. After Atkinswas decided, petitioner, a Louisiana death-row inmate, requested an opportunity to prove he was intellectually disabled in state court. Without affording him an evidentiary hearing or granting him time or funding to secure expert evidence, the state court rejected petitioner's claim. That decision, we hold, was "based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Petitioner was therefore entitled to have his Atkinsclaim considered on the merits in federal court. I Petitioner Kevan Brumfield was sentenced to death for the 1993 murder of off-duty Baton Rouge police officer Betty Smothers. Brumfield, accompanied by another individual, shot and killed Officer Smothers while she was escorting the manager of a grocery store to the bank. At the time of Brumfield's trial, this Court's precedent permitted the imposition of the death penalty on intellectually disabled persons. See Penry v. Lynaugh,492 U.S. 302, 340, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989)(opinion of O'Connor, J.). But in Atkins,this Court…
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