WASHINGTON D.C. -

Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the death penalty have left many people wondering about the future of capital punishment in the United States. A landmark decision barring the execution of the mentally retarded, followed by a verdict taking the power to sentence out of the hands of judges and putting it in the hands of the juries could possibly represent a more liberal trend within the court.

Two weeks ago, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court ruled 6-3 in favor of abolishing the death penalty for the mentally retarded on the grounds that the objectives of capital punishment - deterring murder and exacting retribution for it - do not apply to people with below-average intelligence.

"Those mentally retarded persons who meet the law's requirements for criminal responsibility should be tried and punished when they commit crimes," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the court's majority opinion. "Because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment and control of their impulses, however, they do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct," he said.

The majority opinion also wrote its view was reinforced by polls showing that most Americans opposed the practice of executing mentally retarded individuals.

But dissenters accused the majority of using an "artificial" national consensus to justify their decision.

"Seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the dissent.

Before the decision, Amnesty International documented the United States, Japan and Kyrgzystan as the only three countries in the world to apply the death penalty to the mentally retarded.

Less than a week after Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court issued another judgment requiring that juries, not judges, make the factual determinations supporting death sentences.

As a result of the 7-2 decision, 800 death row inmates in nine states where judges decide death sentences received a reprieve until they are re-sentenced.

Asifa Quraishi, a former death penalty law clerk at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, said the ruling has many implications.

"It's going to put a lot of pressure on the courts initially, because in the short run several states will be put in limbo as they shuffle all the re-sentencing. But, the decision also brings consistency in sentencing procedures to all states by standardizing the criteria," she said.

Kary Moss, director of the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that speaks out against the death penalty, said the group is very pleased with the decisions but remains skeptical about future trends.

"I think they were good decisions and important decisions. It's been a long time since the Supreme Court took a stand (but) it's a pro-death penalty court. It was just in this particular case that the state has gone too far," she said. "(Apprendi vs New Jersey) was one issue that was very amenable to the Supreme Court limiting the death penalty."

LSA senior Afifa Assel said while the decisions successfully restrict the courts' use of the death penalty, they by no means take steps to eliminate the process.

"I think it's very democratic that a jury is now necessary to convict death-row inmates and that people who are mentally retarded and thus potentially unaware of their crime should not be executed," she said. "But these decisions may just be reinforcing that the death penalty as still a viable form of punishment."