Can low-IQ convicts be put on death row?

Culpability is a word not likely found in Johnny Paul Penry's vocabulary.

But it is a legal concept that might well save his life.

Mr. Penry, a Texas death-row inmate with an IQ of 54, is at the center of a US Supreme Court case examining under what circumstances mentally retarded defendants may face capital punishment.

Penry has twice been convicted of the 1979 rape and murder of 22-year-old Pamela Carpenter. And twice juries have voted to send him to his death.

But what brings his case to the nation's highest court for the second time in 12 years is the concept of culpability and a fundamental moral question behind it - whether a convicted killer who is mentally retarded has a full enough understanding of his wrongdoing to justify a death sentence.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Penry v. Johnson, giving justices an opportunity to clarify to what extent judges and jurors should take into consideration a defendant's mental retardation (those with an IQ of 70 and below) when weighing a death sentence.

There is more riding on the case than just Penry's fate. Other courts are watching the outcome for guidance, including a federal appeals court in St. Louis, which earlier this month stayed the execution of Antonio Richardson, who is described as borderline mentally retarded and was 16 when he was involved in the 1991 murder of two sisters.

Death-penalty opponents and mental-health activists are also closely following the case with the hope that the high court will consider declaring a national ban on executing mentally retarded criminals. Currently, 13 states ban death sentences for mentally retarded defendants.

Mitigating factors

Penry's lawyer, Robert Smith, says that his client's mental disability and substantial abuse as a child do not excuse his criminal behavior. But Mr. Smith says they are important mitigating factors that should weigh in the balance during jury deliberations.

"Finding that a horrible crime occurred here and that the defendant is responsible for it is not quite the same as if this horrible crime had been committed by someone who is mentally normal and had not been tortured by his mother from birth," Smith says. "This takes enough of the guilt off his shoulders to make the difference between a life sentence and a death sentence."

In 1989, the first time the high court considered Penry's case, a majority of justices upheld the constitutionality of executing mentally retarded criminals. But the court nonetheless threw out Penry's death sentence, ruling that the jury, when deliberating whether to sentence him to death, had not been given an opportunity to consider Penry's mental disability and the abuse he had suffered as a child.

The justices remanded the case back to Texas with instructions that jurors be permitted to fully consider any mitigating evidence that might convince them that death was not an appropriate sentence for Penry.

Page: 1 | 2