That's the title of Renee Feltz must-read report in the newly redesigned Texas Observer. It's subtitled, "Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ban, Texas has continued to send mentally retarded criminals to death row. Will a Mexican immigrant's case correct this injustice?" Here's a brief excerpt from this in-depth report.
In 2002, six years after Daniel Plata landed on Death Row, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Atkins v. Virginia that “executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual.” Even though mentally disabled people can understand the difference between right and wrong, the court reasoned that they are less able to control impulsive behavior or learn from mistakes. The court supported its decision by pointing to bans on executing the mentally retarded in 17 states and in federal cases as “evolving standards of decency.”
Like most of the states that had already passed bans, the justices used a clinical definition to establish the level of mental retardation that would exempt Daryl Atkins, the Virginia defendant, from death: below-average intellectual abilities defined by an IQ score of 70 or below and “deficits in adaptive behavior” such as practical and social skills. Both of these limitations, the court ruled, had to be present before the age of 18.
But the court left it up to the states to choose their own definitions of mental retardation. Since 2002, eight more states have passed laws that use the clinical definition cited in Atkins. Texas is not one of them. With bipartisan support, the Texas Legislature passed a law in 2001 mandating a life sentence for mentally retarded people convicted of capital crimes. But Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the measure, agreeing with critics that it was a “backdoor attempt to ban the death penalty.” Bans on executing the mentally retarded have been floated in every legislative session since but have never again come up for a vote.
In 2004, a Texas death row inmate named Jose Briseño contended that he was mentally retarded and shouldn’t be executed for murdering a Dimmit County sheriff. In the absence of legislative guidelines, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote “temporary judicial guidelines” that have guided Texas courts ever since. In its Briseño decision, the court called clinical definitions of mental retardation, like those used by the U.S. Supreme Court, “exceedingly subjective.” Texas added its own set of additional criteria in the form of seven questions, including: “Did the commission of that offense require forethought, planning and complex execution of purpose?” If a defendant didn’t address these questions to the court’s satisfaction, he could be eligible for execution even if his test scores showed he was mentally disabled.
Most of Texas’ questions emphasize the events of a crime in deciding whether a defendant meets a legal definition of mental retardation. “I think much of that emphasis is inappropriate because it embodies the stereotype of mentally retarded people as unable to do anything,” says Sheri Lynn Johnson, a professor at Cornell Law School and co-director of its Death Penalty Project. In Texas, under the Briseño standard, if you’re capable of committing a murder, it’s difficult to establish that you’re also mentally retarded.
In other states, evidence of mental retardation is heard in pretrial hearings that decide whether a person is even eligible for a death sentence. In Texas, prosecutors have fought successfully to hold off evidence of mental retardation to the penalty phase of a trial, meaning that jurors consider it only after they have convicted a defendant of murder. Keith Hampton, legislative director of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, says “the gamesmanship is this: I can make you hate this guy so much that you won’t care if he’s mentally retarded.”
Earlier reporting by Feltz on this topic is noted in this post. More on Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling banning the execution of those with mental retardation, is via Oyez. Related posts are in the mental retardation category index.
Mental retardation is now generally referred to as a developmental disability. Because it has a specific meaning with respect to capital cases, we continue to use the older term.
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