Did both the Selective Draft Law Cases and Atkins v. Virginia find that the Constitution had been violated?
Atkins v. Virginia Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002) , is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3 that executing people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments, but states can define who has intellectual disability. Twelve years later in "Hall v. Florida" the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the discretion under which U.S. states can designate an individual convicted of murder as too intellectually incapacitated to be executed.
Tennard v. Dretke Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court was asked whether evidence of the defendant's low IQ in a death penalty trial had been adequately presented to the jury for full consideration in the penalty phase of his trial. The Supreme Court held that not considering a defendant's low IQ would breach his Eighth Amendment rights and constitute a cruel and unusual punishment.