"Miss. Supreme Court is asked to overturn inmate's death sentence, based on his mental ability," is by Emily Wagster Pettus of Associated Press. It's via the Tribune.
A defense attorney on Monday asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to overturn the death penalty of Sherwood Brown, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for the slayings of two women and a teenage girl in DeSoto County.
"It's clear that he's mildly mentally retarded," Brown's attorney, John R. Lane, told justices during oral arguments.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred states from executing mentally disabled inmates.
Lane said Brown scored 75 on an IQ test. A score of 70 is widely accepted as a marker of mental disability, but medical professionals say people scoring as high as 75 can be considered intellectually disabled because of the test's margin of error.
Related posts are in the intellectual disability category index.
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