Victory for Daryl Atkins

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for offenders with mental retardation in the case Atkins v. Virginia.  That decision has resulted in numerous stays of execution in Texas and 11 death sentences being overturned in the state.  Until yesterday, however, Daryl Atkins had not benefited from his own case.  The commonwealth of Virginia had persisted in its argument that Atkins did not have mental retardation.

The Washington Post has, "Death Sentence Commuted in Va. Case."

More than five years after his case made legal history with a U.S. Supreme Court ban on executions of the mentally retarded, Daryl Atkins was spared his own long-held place on Virginia's death row when a judge commuted his sentence to life in prison Thursday.

The reprieve came for reasons that few would have guessed during the ever twisting, nearly 12-year course of the case, which had focused largely on Atkins's mental limitations. Instead, it came because of a Hampton lawyer's allegation of evidence suppression by prosecutors as they prepared for Atkins's murder trial in 1998.

"The court finds that had he [Atkins's attorney] been given the evidence, the outcome might have been different," Judge Prentis Smiley Jr. of York County-Poquoson Circuit Court said after ruling that prosecutors had committed a violation by not fully disclosing the evidence.

And:

In 2005, York County became one of the first jurisdictions to hold an extended trial on the question of whether a death-row prisoner met the test for mental retardation, which in Virginia includes both a low IQ score and "significant limitations in adaptive behavior" before age 18.

In that trial, a jury decided that Atkins did not qualify as mentally retarded under legal criteria -- and thus faced execution again.

But in 2006, the case was overturned again, when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the jurors deciding the mental retardation issue should not have been told that another jury had put Atkins on death row.

As Atkins's attorneys were preparing for another hearing on the question of mental retardation, they were told, by a lawyer for Atkins's codefendant, that he had been bothered for years by prosecutors' interview of his client.

Lawyer Leslie P. Smith testified that the tape recorder was turned off at a point during the interview when Jones's statements were inconsistent with forensic evidence.

Prosecutors let Smith know of the inconsistency and said it was a problem, he testified.

In announcing his decision, Smiley said he would not consider ordering a new trial, which he said would be "a waste of everybody's time" because innocence was not an issue. But he said he felt the reduction of punishment was necessary.

"The court finds there was favorable, potential impeachable evidence possessed by the commonwealth," he said.

The mental retardation index is here.