Though neither man was granted a stay of execution pending the ruling in their lawsuit, their executions were pushed back to April 22 and 29, respectively, after the state could not get the lethal injection drugs needed to execute them.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had said the government would fight Mr. McVeigh's effort to postpone his execution, said, "The ruling of the court in Denver today is a ruling for justice".
Thirteen years ago, the Supreme Court refused to declare that the Constitution categorically barred the execution of retarded people, ruling that "there is insufficient evidence of a national consensus" from which to conclude that such executions violated the country's "evolving standards of decency".
In the last month, the national debate on the death penalty has taken on new force, driven by Supreme Court rulings barring the execution of the mentally retarded and saying that death sentences must be imposed by juries, not judges.
Because of the ruling, more than 350 men on American death rows were spared execution and resentenced.
Last week the UN mission in the country claimed members of the ruling government's security forces, the FRCI, had carried out "extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions".
By June 1794 France had become fully weary of the mounting executions (1,300 in June alone), and Paris was alive with rumours of plots against Robespierre, member of the ruling Committee of Public Safety and leading advocate of the Terror.
The text of the ruling is here.
That limited the implications of the ruling.
John Dramani Mahama, of the ruling National Democratic Congress, on January 7.
