Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Criminal Appeal

Criminal Law

: Criminal Appeal

Cal. Supreme Court Upholds Trial Court Finding Of Mental Retardation In Capital Case

By Jeremy Price

In a unanimous opinion, the California Supreme Court today upheld a trial court's finding that a capital defendant was mentally retarded and therefore categorically excluded from the death penalty under Atkins. California Penal Code section 1376 defines "mentally retarded" as "the condition of significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested before the age of 18." At a pre-trial evidentiary hearing held to determine whether the defendant was mentally retarded, the trial court heard testimony from two defense experts and one prosecution expert. The defense experts acknowledged that the defendant's full scale IQ scores - which ranged from 77 to 92 - were greater than 70, which is generally understood to lie at or near the border between low average intelligence and mild mental retardation...continue to full post

Full post as published by Criminal Appeal on April 12, 2007 (boomark / email).