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| Court clears way for death row challenges for retarded |
| By Los Angeles Times |
| Published: 02/11/2005 |
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A unanimous California Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for dozens of death row inmates to challenge their sentences on the grounds that they are mentally retarded, setting a standard more lenient than prosecutors had wanted. The decision was a major loss for prosecutors - who fear a flood of petitions from death row inmates - to have the court strictly define retardation using a specific IQ level. Instead, the justices said that an inmate can get a hearing to challenge a death sentence so long as a qualified expert supports a claim of retardation. "IQ tests are insufficiently precise to utilize a fixed cutoff in this context," Justice Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the court. Inmates can have their death sentences reduced to life without parole if lawyers can show they have "significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning" and behavioral and practical disabilities that began before age 18. Thirty of the state's 640 death row inmates claim to be mentally retarded, and dozens more are expected to make similar claims as their appeals progress. The ruling was a victory for Anderson Hawthorne Jr., who was sentenced to death for two gang killings in Los Angeles. Hawthorne, whose IQ scores have ranged from 71 to 86, will now have a hearing on his mental fitness in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The average IQ is 100. Claims of mental retardation could lead to the biggest exodus from death row in California since the state high court struck down California's death penalty - later reinstated - in 1976. |
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