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Daniel Plata Determined to Have Mental Retardation

By standdown

Yesterday, the Court of Criminal Appeals struck Daniel Plata's death sentence after determining that he has mental retardation.  The Plata decision is here.  Mike Tolson has, "Texas death row inmate's sentence is reduced to life," in the Houston Chronicle.The court adopted a trial court's findings and agreed that Daniel Plata, 32, is mentally retarded and not eligible for execution. Plata is the 11th person to be removed from death row because of retardation, according to the Texas Defender Service, which represented Plata. The issue of intelligence did not come up at Plata's trial. It was raised during his appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that retardation was a bar to execution. Following a December 2006 hearing in which experts weighed in with conflicting opinions, state District Court Judge Mark Kent Ellis rejected some of the methods used by Dr...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 17, 2008 (boomark / email).