<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Penry v. Lynaugh </Td> </Tr> <P> 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 . </P> <P> Around midnight on August 16, 1996, following a day spent together drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, 18 - year - old Daryl Atkins and his accomplice, William Jones, walked to a nearby convenience store where they abducted Eric Nesbitt, an airman from nearby Langley Air Force Base . Unsatisfied with the $60 they found in his wallet, Atkins drove Nesbitt in his own vehicle to a nearby ATM and forced him to withdraw a further $200 . In spite of Nesbitt's pleas, the two abductors then drove him to an isolated location, where he was shot eight times, killing him . </P>

In which case did the united states supreme court bar the execution of the mentally handicapped