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| Supreme Court overturns death sentence of retarded man |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/05/2001 |
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In a case closely watched by opponents of capital punishment, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a jury should have considered a Texas inmate's mental capacity before sentencing him to death. The unanimous ruling called for a new sentencing hearing for Johnny Paul Penry, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of who is on Texas's death row for the 1989 rape and murder of 22-year-old Pamela Moseley Carpenter. His lawyers have described Penry as mildly mentally retarded. The Texas Legislature recently passed a bill banning the execution of mentally retarded persons. Gov. Rick Perry hasn't said whether he will sign it. The Supreme Court made headlines last fall when it accepted Penry's latest appeal, in part because death penalty opponents say juries too often get inadequate instructions and in part because of Penry's own notoriety. Penry has been in the forefront of the debate over capital punishment almost from the moment he confessed to killing Carpenter. After a complicated and highly publicized passage through the Texas courts, the Supreme Court accepted his first appeal and in 1989 used his case to establish two related tenets of capital punishment practice. The court ruled then that execution of the mentally retarded is constitutional, but juries considering the death penalty must understand how to weigh retardation as a mitigating factor. Penry's case returned to the Texas courts, where his lawyers claim the second jury that sentenced him to death got no better instructions than the first. That is the question the Supreme Court agreed to review in his case, but it soon became a sidelight. One day before the justices heard arguments in Penry's case in March, they raised the stakes much higher by agreeing to hear a separate North Carolina case that asks the same question Penry did 12 years ago: Does executing the mentally retarded violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment? If the court reverses itself with that case and declares that the retarded must be spared, the issue of proper death penalty jury instructions would be is irrelevant. |
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