The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruling in Smith v. State is at the link.
"Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirms murder convictions, death penalty in deaths of 5," is AP coverage by Tim Talley, via the Republic.
An Oklahoma appeals court Wednesday upheld the death penalty imposed on an Oklahoma man convicted in the deaths of his wife and her four children 20 years ago.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the murder convictions and sentences given to Roderick Lynn Smith, 46, who was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder for the June 1993 deaths of his wife, Jennifer, and her four children. Smith admitted that he killed the victims.
In a 47-page decision, the five-member court unanimously rejected defense arguments that the Oklahoma County jury that sentenced Smith to death received inadequate legal instructions about his alleged mental retardation. The court ruled that a separate jury in Oklahoma County decided in March 2004 that Smith was not mentally retarded as defined by Oklahoma law.
The U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally retarded in 2002, ruling that executing mentally retarded individuals violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Among other criteria, Oklahoma law defines mental retardation as a person with an IQ of 70 or below who has "significant limitations in adaptive functioning."
Smith's attorney, Marva Banks of the Oklahoma County Public Defender's Office, argued that the sentencing jury heard evidence about Smith's mental deficiencies, but the trial judge deleted directions about the relevance of the information from the legal instruction he gave jurors.
Earlier coverage from Oklahoma begins at the link. Related posts are in the mental retardation index.
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