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| Judge Takes N.C. Inmate Off Death Row |
| By Charlotte Observer |
| Published: 12/16/2002 |
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Robert Lewis McClain, condemned to die by a Mecklenburg jury three years ago for murdering a co-worker after raping and shooting his former girlfriend, won't be executed. Superior Court Judge Charles Lamm on Wednesday threw out McClain's death sentence after ruling that the 29-year-old convicted killer was mentally retarded. Lamm then sentenced McClain to life in prison. He could be eligible for parole after serving 30 years. McClain is only the third condemned man to get his death sentence overturned since North Carolina outlawed the execution of the mentally retarded in 2001. Fifty-two of North Carolina's more than 200 death-row inmates have sought to get their sentences reduced under the new law. McClain, his legs shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, sat, stared down and showed no emotion as the judge struck down his death sentence. He nodded at one of his defense lawyers as he was escorted from the courtroom. 'I think he feels relieved,' Charlotte defense attorney Henderson Hill, one of McClain's lawyers, said. 'He understands he will not be on death row. And I think he understands that it's because he's mentally retarded. 'I think the death penalty is wrong and inappropriate and bad public policy. But it's particularly bad and immoral when it's imposed on a person whose capacity to process information is as impaired as Robert's.' During Wednesday's hearing, defense attorneys Hill and Gretchen Engel, who works for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, presented evidence that McClain was labeled mentally retarded as a child in school and placed in special education classes. McClain had IQ test scores of 57, 65 and 70 while in school. In 1996, at the age of 23, he scored 64 on an IQ test. A score of 70 and below is considered mentally retarded. Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorneys Marsha Goodenow and David Graham did not present any evidence Wednesday. Goodenow told the judge that the state does not believe McClain was mentally retarded. But the prosecutor said the state would not contest the defense evidence showing that McClain met the legal definition of retardation. After striking down McClain's death sentence Wednesday, the judge ordered that the killer's life sentence run consecutive to the 125-year sentence in South Carolina. Assistant DA Graham asked that the life sentence be consecutive. The prosecutor told the judge that McClain would be eligible for parole in South Carolina after serving 10 to 15 years in prison. McClain will be eligible for parole in North Carolina after serving 20 years of the life sentence. He's eligible because Evans' killing occurred before the state abolished parole. |
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