Refer to the passage.If the culpability [responsibility] of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution. . . .. . . It is the same cognitive and behavioral impairments that make these defendants less morally culpable—for example, the diminished ability to understand and process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses—that also make it less likely that they can process the information of the possibility of execution as a penalty and, as a result, control their conduct based upon that information. . . .. . . We are not persuaded that the execution of mentally retarded criminals will measurably advance the deterrent or the retributive purpose of the death penalty. . . . In the light of our "evolving standards of decency,” we therefore conclude that such punishment is excessive and that the Constitution "places a substantive restriction on the State’s power to take the life” of a mentally retarded offender.–Supreme Court ruling, Atkins v. Virginia, (2002)