Today's Fulton County Daily Report has, "11th Circuit: Ga. Law Violates Eighth Amendment Rights of Mentally Retarded Death Penalty Defendants," by R. Robin McDonald.
A Georgia law requiring that mentally retarded death penalty defendants, in order to avoid execution, must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are retarded violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment, a judicial panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has found.
In issuing the opinion, the appellate panel reversed a 2003 Georgia Supreme Court ruling, finding instead that the state's stringent standard of proof "is not an appropriate way to vindicate a mentally retarded offender's constitutional right not to be put to death."
The appellate opinion, issued June 18 in a 20-year-old state prison murder case, would bring Georgia law in line with the remainder of the country as to how mentally handicapped defendants charged with capital crimes are treated, and when and how they may face the death penalty.
Although Georgia was the first state in the nation to outlaw the execution of mentally retarded defendants in 1988, it remains the only state to require an offender to provide proof of mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt -- the most stringent legal standard, according to the opinion. The maximum penalty for mentally retarded offenders in Georgia is life imprisonment.
Twenty-two other states require a defendant to prove mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence; four states have adopted a "clear and convincing standard" -- both less stringent, civil standards of proof. Three states have no uniform standard of proof with regard to mentally retarded capital defendants.
The findings of the 11th Circuit panel -- which included Judges Rosemary Barkett, Stanley Marcus and Frank M. Hull -- included a strong 29-page dissent by Hull, who said that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision outlawing the execution of mentally retarded defendants, Atkins v. Virginia, "left it for the states to develop the procedural and substantive guides for determining who is mentally retarded."
Hull concluded, "Because there is no 'clearly established' federal rule regarding the burden of proof for mental retardation claims," a 1996 federal law that restricts federal civil appeals by convicted criminal defendants "mandates that this lower federal court leave the Georgia Supreme Court decision alone -- even if we believe it incorrect or unwise -- and affirm this case."
State Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, who is running for the state Democratic nomination for governor and whose office is defending the Georgia statute, will ask the the 11th Circuit to reconsider the ruling en banc, Baker spokesman Russell D. Willard said Tuesday.
And:
Brian Kammer, an attorney with the Georgia Resource Center who has been representing defendant Warren Lee Hill Jr. in state and federal appeals of his 1991 death sentence since 1996, said the appellate panel's ruling has reversed a "stark instance of injustice."
"The burden of proof has been challenged several times in different cases unsuccessfully in Georgia," Kammer said. "But it certainly hadn't gotten to 11th Circuit before now."
Hill's case, Kammer continued, "is a primary example of how the reasonable doubt burden of proof will likely result in the execution of the mentally retarded."
Earlier coverage of the case is here. The ruling in Warren Lee Hill, Jr. v. Derrick Schofield is in Adobe .pdf format. Related posts are in the mental retardation index.
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