California pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys recent­ly agreed that Calvin Coleman, Jr., a man sen­tenced to death for mur­der in 1980, is men­tal­ly retard­ed and there­fore exempt from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion that declared exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly retard­ed indi­vid­u­als uncon­sti­tu­tion­al (Atkins v. Virginia), California mod­i­fied its laws in 2005 to con­form to the rul­ing. Coleman is the first per­son about whom both the pros­e­cu­tion and the defense agreed that he met the con­di­tions. Some cas­es have been reject­ed while oth­ers are still pend­ing.

The deter­mi­na­tion began with months of gath­er­ing records and test­ing the defen­dant on death row. California’s new law defines retar­da­tion as ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly sub-aver­age gen­er­al intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing” with ​“deficits in adap­tive behav­ior” before the age of 18; it does not use a strict IQ stan­dard. Prosecutor Rob LaForge said his office gath­ered thou­sands of doc­u­ments, ​“essen­tial­ly going back to the birth of Mr. Coleman until now,” to assess his men­tal sta­tus. One of Coleman’s attor­neys, Michael Charlson, said, ​“I give cred­it to the District Attorney’s Office here. They did their own test­ing and reached a con­clu­sion con­sis­tent with what we con­tend­ed. They did the right thing when the facts became known.”

Records showed that Coleman had a his­to­ry of men­tal deficits, first not­ed in court records at the age of 13. The ini­tial cause may have been brain dam­age result­ing from a car crash in 1971 and an alleged blow to the head from a coun­selor at a youth facil­i­ty. His IQ tests have ranged from the mid-60’s at the age of 13 to 72 as an adult. Attorney Charlson com­ment­ed, ​“Whatever a person’s view on the death penal­ty, I don’t think any­one would dis­pute that it needs to be admin­is­tered in a fair way.”
( L. Carter, ​“Killer’s death penal­ty tossed — D.A., defense agree man in ​’80 Healdsburg slay­ing is men­tal­ly defi­cient, inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion,” Press Democrat, August 28, 2008). See Mental Retardation and Arbitrariness. In some states, Coleman would have been exe­cut­ed many years ago.

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