Ohio Supreme Court mental retardedness ruling

The Ohio Supreme Court last Wednesday vacated the death sentence of an Akron man, ruling that he was mentally retarded under both Ohio and federal standards, and therefore cannot be sentenced to death. The case’s remanded to the Summit County Court of Common Pleas for resentencing under the statutory guidelines for non-capital cases of aggravated murder. (See Court’s summary)( Decision )

The man was convicted of murder, aggravated murder, and attempted murder in the shooting of three people back in 1996. That conviction was upheld on direct appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court , with the United States Supreme Court denying a writ of certiorari in 1999.

In October 2000, appellant filed petition for habeas corpus in Northern Ohio District Court, which was denied in July 2003 and appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. While this claim was still pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, which prohibited the execution of mentally retarded criminal defendants, and a successive state post-conviction petition, asserting his own mental retardedness likened to Atkins. The court in this post-conviction hearing denied his application saying he had “failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he had significant limitations in adaptive skills and that those limitations had existed prior to age 18.” That was appealed to the Ninth District Court of Appeals, and then to this current holding.

Concurrent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins in 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court, in State v. Lott, established like criteria and procedures to be applied by Ohio courts in review of Atkins claims asserted by Ohio offenders under sentence of death.