On Monday, March 30, the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of three Kansas death penalty cases and heard oral argument in a Louisiana case that presented questions on the role of the federal courts in determining whether a state prisoner who faces the death penalty has intellectual disability. In the cases of Kansas v. Reginald Carr, Kansas v. Jonathan Carr, and Kansas v. Sidney Gleason, the Court granted review of the Kansas Supreme Court’s decisions overturning the defendants’ death sentences because their sentencing juries were not told that, unlike proof of other facts in the case, the defendant did not have to prove mitigating circumstances (reasons for life) beyond a reasonable doubt. It also granted review in the Carr cases of the state court’s decision that the brothers should not have been tried together in the penalty phase of their capital trial because some of their mitigating evidence was mutually antagonistic and the jury should not have considered this evidence against the other brother. In Brumfield v. Cain, the Court heard argument in the case of a Louisiana man, Kevan Brumfield, sentenced to death before the Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia banned the execution of defendants with mental retardation (now intellectual disability). (For more on the Brumfield case, click here.) The Supreme Court will determine whether the federal courts must defer to a decision of the state courts that rejected his claim of intellectual disability based solely upon the evidence presented at his trial or whether to credit the federal district court’s finding after a seven-day evidentiary hearing that Mr. Brumfield is intellectually disabled and may not be executed.

(A. Hamm, “Breaking News,” SCOTUSblog, March 30, 2015, 9:46 a.m., L. Denniston, “Argument analysis: The record’s the thing — unfortunately,” SCOTUSblog, March 30, 2015.) See Intellectual Disability and U.S. Supreme Court.

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