The Supreme Court takes aim at intellectually disabled death row inmates.

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More than two decades ago, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision prohibiting the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. The case, Atkins v. Virginia , was no sidebar in the world of capital punishment.

Large numbers of those who commit capital crimes suffer from an intellectual disability. Not only that, even after Atkins, researchers found that “the vast majority of executed offenders possess significant functional deficits that rival—and perhaps outpace—those associated with intellectual impairment.”

How can it be that Atkins did not take care of this problem?

To put it simply, death penalty states have worked hard to get ar