Posted on 11/16/2004 10:55:04 AM PST by JesseHousman
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday overturned the death sentence of a convicted Texas killer because jurors in his trial did not consider his learning disability and other evidence.
The unsigned 7-2 decision was another legal reproach to Texas, which executes more people than any other state.
Texas courts had turned down LaRoyce Lathair Smith's appeal of his sentence for the 1991 killing of a Taco Bell manager during a robbery attempt in Dallas. The victim, Jennifer Soto, 19, was pistol-whipped, shot and stabbed with a butcher knife.
In the ruling, justices cited their decision nearly five months ago in the case of another Texas Death Row inmate, Robert Tennard, which opened the door to new challenges from several dozen condemned men in Texas who claim that they have low IQs and were not given enough chance to present mitigating evidence to a jury.
''There is no question that a jury might well have considered [Smith's] IQ scores and history of participation in special-education classes as a reason to impose a sentence more lenient than death,'' the court wrote in Monday's decision.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justices, disagreed.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist had joined Scalia and Thomas in opposing the outcome of the earlier Texas case. Rehnquist, who has been away from the court since last month while receiving chemotherapy and radiation for thyroid cancer, supported the latest decision, though no explanation was provided.
In his appeal, Smith argued that jurors were not allowed to consider evidence including that he was 19 at the time of the Taco Bell robbery, that he had a troubled home life and that he had a low IQ and learning disabilities.
A Texas court rejected the claim, saying that was not relevant because there was no link between the murder and his diminished capacity.
Also Monday, the justices ordered an appeals court to reconsider whether Texas Death Row inmate Ted Calvin Cole, known as Jalil Abdul-Kabir, should get a chance to challenge his sentence on grounds that jurors did not take into account his troubled childhood and emotional disorders. Cole was convicted of strangling another man with a dog leash.
Earlier this year, justices lifted inmate Delma Banks' death sentence and delivered a strong rebuke of Texas officials and lower courts for failing to ensure that he received a fair trial. The court said prosecutors hid key information .
And last year, the court sided with a black Texas Death Row inmate, Thomas Miller-El, who claimed that prosecutors in Dallas County stacked his jury with whites.
The Miller-El case will be reviewed again next month because an appeals court again found that he should face the death penalty.
Yeah. The SOB was incapable of reading Shakespeare.
Why would a "learning disability" be a mitigating factor in a murder case?
Wow!!! Another happy member of the demoncrap
electorate!!!!
MV
Thanks soopremes for seeing that justice is done by overriding state's courts (and rights) and causing the warehousing of this murder for most of his unnatural life.
If the IQ tests were made after he was arrested for the crime, then they are suspect anyway.
He wanted everything he could get his hands on.
It could be evidence that he did not possess the mental state necessary to qualify for a capital crime.
At the very worst, he might not have received the death penalty, but there was no way that his learning diability would have gotten him off.
The solution is obvious - send the dumb murderer to live with Sandra Day O'Connor for a couple of weeks.
If this guy was so stupid, then why couldn't his victims have just distracted him by saying, "oh, look--a butterfly!" or something like that? He was smart enough to know how to kill someone, smart enough to know how to commit armed robbery, what more do you need? Is he automatically spared the death penalty because he wasn't smart enough to not get caught?
This should be the first line of cases overturned by the newly appointed Bush Supreme Court Justices once they're seated.
Sickening. He had enough intelligence to know that if he wanted money, he would find some at a Taco Bell. And, if he wanted it, he would have to overpower those working there. And he knew that in order to overpower them, he needed to bring a gun and use it on them, and when that wasn't enough, finish the job with a butcher knife. His "learning disabilities" didn't stop him from learning that much.
Whatever happened to ignorance of the Law is no excuse?
He had IQ enough to rob a Taco Bell, then pistol whip, shoot, and stab the victim to death. That's all that matters.
He knew enough intentionally to pistol-whip, shoot, and stab his victim to death. That should have been far more than enough "requisite mental state" to sustain his sentence.
At least we're still getting part of it right ...
So a low IQ and learning disabilities make you unaware that you shouldn't pistol whip and stab a young girl with a butcher knife?
If this is a conservative court, as some in the MSM say, I hate to think what a liberal one would do. This is disgusting.
Probably. However, I think the jury should have been allowed to consider the evidence. I'm pretty sure they would have given him the death sentence anyway.
It takes away a job for a state or federal social service employee?
The taxpayers are able to pay more taxes keeping him alive and incarcerated for 50 more years?
It hurts the self esteem of other dimwits?
It removes a Dimocrat voter from the "living" voter list?
If all morons are executed for murder the moron population will become endangered?
He promised to move to California and clean graffiti off the buildings in LA?
Texas was picking on him because he was a Muslim?
Payback to the 60.5 million voters who voted for President Bush?
He said he was sorry?
Oh ... I give up! ;)
This killer should be sent to Iraq to take out terrorists. There would be no question as to whether his victims were unarmed civilians. This is a chunk of war equipment that we need to get into play. He also could be used to torture prisoners since his "diminished capacity" would be grounds to let him off.
He was sufficiently intelligent to commit a robbery and use multiple weapons, not just an assault. Clearly he is intelligent enough to be executed.
Who ever came up with the requiremtn that a murderer must have a minimum IQ to pay the price of his crime? I guarantee that we will now shift from "mental retardation" to imaginary maladies that momentarily distorted his judgment. It may be distasteful to zap a retard, but, if he did the crime, get him!
And yet Republican "leadership" thinks it's a good idea to put Arlen Specter in the driver's seat on judiciary appointments.
Houston, we have a problemo!
In his appeal, Smith argued that jurors were not allowed to consider evidence including that he was 19 at the time of the Taco Bell robbery, that he had a troubled home life and that he had a low IQ and learning disabilities.
If you are smart enough to find your way to Taco Bell, you are smart enough to know you can't rob and kill the manager.
Human scum lives
Carla Faye Tucker dies
This is Texas, and we don't put up with this BS down here. If he knew enough to kill on purpose, that's all the mental state we require. Really, this nation would be a whole lot better off it it was more like Texas.
Smart enough to kill but too stupid to be killed.
This cold-blooded killer should get no more consideration for his lack of IQ than a rabid animal should get for its rabies infection.
If he didn't have these disabilities, would Smith's victim, Jennifer Soto, be any less dead?
Why should there be affirmative action for murderers who are retarded or crazy? If it can be proven you killed on a murder one rap you should be executed. I really don't care what was going on in your mind.
The POS committed murder - and the murder happened in the commission of another crime - that is grounds for the death penalty. What does his IQ have to do with it? He is a MURDERER.
This this punks IQ (or lack thereof) make his victim any less dead?
He obviously INTENDED to kill the manager - pistol wipped/shot/and stabbed. Hmmm... sounds like he thought it through and wanted that person DEAD. IQ or not.
Now the Texas taxpayers will have to continue to pay some rediculous figure to keep this punk alive in prison - and probably for some sort of "special" help for his learning disability.
Makes me want to vomit.
A freaking murderer is a murderer.
Only a liberal could be shocked that many killers rode the short bus. Ann Coulter wrote of this inJune of 2002, it's in her new book ppg 222-223:
"The Court ruled that Atkins cannot be executed if he can prove he is "retartded". In other words, Atkins avoids his catital sentence if he's at least smart enough to know how to fail an IQ test."
Liberals denounce the IQ test and the Bell Curve as racist and arbitrary - until it might spring some criminals from death row. THEN they embrace it.
My momma always said, "Evil is as Evil does."
Get it?
That's for the jury to decide. I'm pretty confident they would have given him the death penalty anyway.
This case doesn't mean a state can't execute someone with a learning disability, it just means that the jury can consider that fact when deciding whether or not to give the death penalty.
Kind of the point I'm trying to make. The jury probably would have given this guy the death penalty anyway, even if they knew about his mental issues.
What "mitigating circumstances"? The monster pistol-whipped, shot and stabbed a 19-year-old girl. So the guy's stupid AND a monster. Execute his dumb ass.
It seems obvious to me. If you can't read you have no way of knowing you aren't supposed to shoot, beat, and knife people. Don't you remember reading those instructions in school?
"The victim, Jennifer Soto, 19, was pistol-whipped, shot and stabbed with a butcher knife. "
And WHERE "honorable" Justices, is justice for Jennifer Soto??
But then what can one expect from a panel of superannuated half-wits?? Perhaps they view the perpetrator's situation through their own dimwitted eyes.
If a person is obviously an uncontrolled lunatic or has the mentality of a young child to the degree they are unaware of their actions, perhaps an argument may be made for not executing them. But THAT is an issue for the State Legislature, not the Federal Courts. The Founding Fathers clearly had no problem with capital punishment as they inflcited it often enough. Therefore "cruel and unusual" only applies from a purely current subject perspective.
Clearly Rehnquist has been on the Court too long, is too old, and obviously contradicted a prior decision of his making his judgement here questionable.
O'Connor is obviously deferring to the opinions of those foreign legal systems she has mentioned in the past, which do not permit capital punishment. Kennedy has turned into an O'Connor clone.
As for Bader-Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer, we are all well aware of their liberal drift, and as such, feel the Courts have a right to unconstitutionally abridge the acts of a legislature without any real justification other than their own sentiments on the subject at hand.
All the more reason that that lying louse Arlen Specter NOT wind up chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, or we can expect MORE idiotic justices on the Federal Courts.
"And last year, the court sided with a black Texas Death Row inmate, Thomas Miller-El, who claimed that prosecutors in Dallas County stacked his jury with whites. "
This is complete poppy cock!
Jurors are interviewed by the DEFENSE attorney and maybe rejected at any point before the trial.
If his jury was 'stacked against him' then he has no one to blame but his own attorney!
His was a disadvantaged childhood.
He wanted everything he could get his hands on.
"Hey, I'm depraved on accounta' I'm deprived!" Where's Officer Krupke when you need 'im?
It's the "living Constitution" you know. In today's world, stupid people are victims and need our help, regardless of what they do. It's George Bush's fault.
Premeditated murder, if you have a learning disability, is prefectly OK.............God help us!!!!!
That was Clinton at his most politically cynical. He needed to look tough on crime so he made sure to be there for the execution of someone who probably didn't have the mental capacity to qualify for the death penalty.
The Supremes are not saying that his punshment is inappropriate because he didn't/couldn't know the law due to his stupidity. They're saying that the jury should have been allowed to hear evidence of his mental capacity (like the IQ tests, which the prosecution could've easily rebutted because the qwere taken after his arrest) so that they may determine, based on all of the circumstances, whether he should be put to death.
Personally, I don't think that low IQ should matter to a sentence in a willful stabbing, pistol-whipping, and shooting case like this... his low intellectual ability doesn't lessen what he did, nor does it conjure any sympathy for sparing his worthless hide... but I wasn't on the jury.
Thanks for the enlightenment.
If that's the case, he should be sterilized.
It's called stare decisis. He has the integrity to follow the law as it is. The Court has held that defendants are allowed to present this type of evidence, and they held so just last Term. Rehnquist followed the law as it is decided.
It irritates me when people dissent ad nauseum because they disagree with the law. Make your dissent in the case and then accept the law as applied until you have a legitimate reason to overturn it. Marshall and Brennan did this endlessly with death penalty cases after 1976, when they repeatedly dissented in every death penalty case claiming that it was unconstitutional, despite the Court's decision otherwise. Now, I'm against the death penalty in EVERY circumstance, but what Marshall and Brennan did was wrong.
Rehnquist is following the law--commendable and respectable.
Sterilizing the "defective" members of society has been tried before. Let's not re-visit that horror again.
Nov. 16, 2004, 9:16AMHigh court reverses 2 Texas death cases
Justices say mitigating factors were disregarded
By PATTY REINERT
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court threw out two Texas death sentences Monday, rebuking lower courts for disobeying its previous orders to make sure juries consider mitigating evidence, such as a killer's low IQ, before deciding punishment.
Opinion: Smith vs. Texas Without argument, the high court issued an unsigned 7-2 ruling reversing the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' decision in the case of LaRoyce Lathair Smith. The lower court had upheld the death sentence of the Dallas killer, who claims faulty instructions prevented jurors from sparing his life based on his 78 IQ and history of learning disabilities.
The justices also rejected, without comment, the sentence of Ted Calvin Cole, also known as Jalil Abdul-Kabir. It sent his case back to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, the federal court that reviews Texas death sentences. Cole is challenging his sentence, saying jurors were not able to fully consider his troubled childhood and emotional problems.
In their opinion in Smith's case, the justices said that despite several of their previous rulings, the Texas court failed to get the message that juries in capital murder cases should fully consider mitigating evidence. "There is no question that a jury might well have considered petitioner's IQ scores and history of participation in special-education classes as a reason to impose a sentence more lenient than death," the court said in a 12-page opinion. The justices said the state court "erroneously relied on a test we never countenanced and now have unequivocally rejected."
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying only that they would have affirmed the Texas court's decision.
Smith has options
Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, declined to comment on the decisions.
Jordan Steiker, a University of Texas law professor who represented Smith on appeal, said his client could now ask for a new sentencing trial or could seek to have his sentence changed to life in prison.
Steiker said the justices' willingness to slap the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals without hearing arguments in the case "reflects a growing disenchantment and impatience" with the lower court's death penalty rulings.
"This is aimed at that court's recalcitrance," he said. "The high court is sending a clear message that even if it's not willing to hear a case, it's going to supervise the Court of Criminal Appeals' application of its decisions. ... It is saying the court is not only wrong, but it is so wrong that it requires our intervention and supervision."
The cases decided Monday are among dozens in Texas that went to trial decades ago, when Texas juries were faced with conflicting instructions on how to weigh mitigating evidence when deciding punishment in capital murder cases.
The Texas Legislature has since rewritten the jury instructions to include a separate mitigating-evidence instruction, solving the problem. But many of the older cases are still in the appeals pipeline.
During the late 1980s and early '90s, after the Supreme Court first waded into the issue and pointed out the flaw in Texas' jury instructions, the 5th Circuit developed its own test for determining on appeal whether juries should have been given a separate instruction about mitigating evidence.
The court said that in order for it to review a case involving killers with low intelligence or other mitigating evidence, defense lawyers would have to prove that their client suffered from a "uniquely severe permanent handicap" and that there was a substantial link between the handicap and the crime.
Last June, the Supreme Court decided in another Texas case, that of Houston killer Robert Tennard, that the 5th Circuit's test had "no foundation in the decisions of this court."
On Monday, the high court reiterated that decision by sending the Cole case back to the 5th Circuit and by using the Smith case to tell the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that it meant what it said about mitigating evidence in the 6-3 Tennarddecision.
Some defense attorneys said Monday's action sends a clear message that the Supreme Court is watching Texas death penalty appeals more closely than ever.
"This is a strong rebuke to the lower courts," said David Dow, a death penalty expert at the University of Houston Law Center.
Resolving other cases
The question now, he said, is whether the lower courts will resolve the remaining cases on their own or whether each case will have to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court threw out the death sentence of Delma Banks, citing misconduct by Texas prosecutors who withheld information that might have helped Banks' defense.
Last year, the court agreed with Thomas Miller-El, a black Texas death row inmate, that Dallas County prosecutors illegally prevented blacks from serving on his jury, saying the 5th Circuit wrongly upheld his conviction. The case was returned to theappeals court, which again upheld the conviction.
The Supreme Court again accepted the Miller-El case and said it will hear arguments next month.
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