| Show Retardation awaits definition David G. G Savage Los Angeles Times Five years after the Supreme Court declared in Atkins v. v Virginia that the death penalty was unconstitutional for those who are mentally retarded Daryl Atkins still sits on death row In August lawyers for the theman theman theman man who won the landmark ruling will try again to convince a jury here that he heis heis heis is indeed mentally retarded and therefore deserves a life term in prison note not execution Three times before the county prosecutor has persuaded juries here to condemn Atkins Atkin to die and fourth she expects to win a time Daryl was a slow and reader He was lazy he came to school stoned But until he committed this he heI one thought t murder no I was mentally retarded f ft tf said Eileen M. M Addison the prosecutor His case is not unique Although the high court found that there was a national consensus against executing the mentally retarded it left it to the states to decide which murderers would qualify for that exemption Determined prosecutors have had little trouble convincing juries that a convicted killer with a alow alow alow low IQ is is not necessarily retarded The definition of retardation is imprecise test results can vary giving prosecutors an opportunity to produce additional scores and other evidence to make the case that an inmate is smart enough to die The result is that the Supreme Courts Court's ruling has had less effect than many had foreseen There has been more resistance than I expected u n lt I L 1 said University of New Mexico law professor James Ellis an expert on mental retardation who represented Atkins in the Supreme Court A few states moved off death row several inmates w who 4 IQ scores inthe in inthe the or low he said But states where capital punishment has strong support including Virginia and Texas have let juries decide And its an uphill fight with the jury to establish mental retardation Ellis said In 2002 he told the high court there were no reliable numbers on how many of the nations nation's more than row death-row inmates were mentally retarded Some experts predicted several dozen inmates would qualify for the exemption Human Rights Watch said the number could be as high as 7 I i. i Since then said Richard Dieter executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington only a handful of inmates Dieter knows of have been found to tobe tobe tobe be mentally retarded and had their death sentences commuted The Atkins decision has had an effect but not a sweeping effect said Dieter whose center opposes capital punishment His case is emblematic because in a lot of states it has resulted in case-by-case case litigation The greatest effect of the courts court's ruling may have been in cases that followed Some prosecutors probably chose not to seek seck the death penalty when a murder suspect had low IQ scores legal experts said Death Penalty Continued Con on page 3 1 L- L 7 Death Penalty Continued from page 1 Historically the law has exempted from criminal punishment people who are mentally ill If they were disturbed or delusional when they committed the crime they presumably could not understand the consequences of their acts and therefore would not be considered legally responsible People with mild mental retardation arc are judged to be competent to stand trial They presumably understand when they have done wrong They should be tried and punished when they commit crimes Justice John Paul Stevens said in the Atkins decision Because of their disabilities in areas o of reasoning judgment and control of their impulses however they do not act with the level of moral culpability that puts them among the small group of the worst offenders who deserve to die The Atkins case shows the difficulty of deciding whether a criminal is mentally retarded a condition that Stevens quoting the American Association on Mental Retardation defined in part as significantly intellectual functioning measured perhaps by an and IQ of 70 or below difficulty in adapting to the ordinary tasks of life By August 1996 Atkins then 19 had a long criminal record including the shooting and wounding of a woman in her front yard in Hampton Va Late one evening he and anda a friend were panhandling for beer money outside a convenience store when Atkins put a gun to the head of Eric Nesbitt a 21 year-old year airman stationed at nearby Langley Air Force Base They forced their way into Nesbitt's truck and made him drive to a bank and take from an automated teller machine The scene was captured on camera the frightened young airman with Atkins holding a gun to his head Next the criminal pair drove Nesbitt to a thickly wooded area near Yorktown where Atkins took Nesbitt from the truck and shot him eight 1 1 times Atkins was tried at York County Courthouse about four miles from the murder scene A psychologist hired by the defense interviewed Atkins in jail and gave him hima a standard intelligence test saying his IQ was 59 The psychologist testified Atkins was was mildly mentally retarded The jury unanimously sentenced him to death The Virginia I Supreme Court reversed this sentence because of ofa a technical error on the jury form a new jury was convened and also voted for fora a death sentence The case was appealed to the Supreme Court in 2001 and the 6 3 decision in Atkins' Atkins favor put his name into constitutional history In dissent Justice Antonin said the ruling would turn the process of capital H. I. I i t 1 trial into a game and that the symptoms of this condition can readily be feigned Defense lawyers also say they are stymied by the need to prove the defendant is mentally retarded We Ve think that is the wrong test said attorney Richard Burr a veteran opponent of capital punishment We Ve think the state should have havethe havethe havethe the burden of proving the defendant does not have mental retardation In 2005 12 jurors agreed with Atkins' Atkins prosecutors and said he did not qualify as retarded A year later however the Virginia Supreme Court said the judge had erred by I informing jurors that Atkins had been sentenced to death previously |
