Death-row Inmate’s “Mental Retardation” To Be Re-examined

The Supreme Court Monday heard arguments from an Ohio man who claims that he has already been found to be mentally retarded, a status which renders him ineligible for the death penalty. The state of Ohio is trying to reopen examination into his mental capacity so that it can carry out his death sentence.

In 1992 an Ohio jury convicted Michael Bies of beating and murder of a 10-year-old boy near Cincinnati. The jury sentenced Bies to death, even though he had an IQ of about 68. Doctors generally define mental retardation as having an IQ below 70, having significant limitations in two or more areas of adaptive behavior, and presenting evidence that the limitations became apparent before the age of 18. Bies filed several appeals to higher courts, and each found that Bies’s borderline mental retardation was a mitigating factor, but aggravating factors made the death penalty still appropriate.

In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” prevented states from executing the mentally retarded.

Yesterday, Bies brought his case to the Supreme Court, arguing that because the appeals courts had earlier said he was mentally retarded, the state could not revisit that issue. Ohio wants to hold a hearing to show that he is not mentally retarded, and therefore that he is eligible for the death penalty.

Ohio’s Solicitor General, Benjamin Mizer, argued that lower courts had not yet considered factors other than Bies’s IQ, so a new hearing should be held to examine Bies’s mental state for Atkins purposes. Further, Mizer argued that the lower courts had examined Bies’s mental capacity as part of a variety of factors, so the intermediate determination that Bies is mentally retarded should not be considered binding.

Justices Souter and Ginsburg are normally the most liberal of their colleagues on the bench. Both drove home the point that only if a court’s conclusion on a single point is “necessary” to its final decision can that intermediate conclusion be binding on later courts. If the court could have sentenced Bies to death without concluding he was mentally retarded, the conclusion on his mental capacity was not necessary to the final decision.

The Court will issue a ruling before its term ends in early June.