Judge Finds Federal Death-Row Prisoner Bruce Webster Intellectually Disabled, Vacates Death Sentence

An Indiana fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er Bruce Webster, find­ing that Webster is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. After a five-day hear­ing in April 2019, in which the court heard live tes­ti­mo­ny from sev­en men­tal health experts and con­sid­ered depo­si­tion tes­ti­mo­ny from three oth­ers, Senior Judge William T. Lawrence of the Southern District of Indiana ruled on June 18, 2019 that new evi­dence showed that Webster had intel­lec­tu­al and adap­tive deficits in func­tion­ing that qual­i­fied him for a diag­no­sis of Intellectual Disability, mak­ing him inel­i­gi­ble for execution. 

Webster was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in a fed­er­al dis­trict court in Texas in 1996, six years before the U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia banned the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. His lawyers pre­sent­ed some evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty at tri­al, but only four of the twelve jurors believed he was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. His appeal lawyers lat­er dis­cov­ered undis­closed gov­ern­ment records con­tain­ing addi­tion­al evi­dence of his dis­abil­i­ty and attempt­ed to present it to the court in 2010, but a fed­er­al appeals court said he had exhaust­ed his appeals and new evi­dence could be con­sid­ered only if it relat­ed to inno­cence of the crime. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jacques Wiener wrote at the time, ​“If the evi­dence that Webster attempts to intro­duce here were ever pre­sent­ed to a judge or jury for con­sid­er­a­tion on the mer­its, it is vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed that he would be found to be men­tal­ly retard­ed” (now known as intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled). Although rec­og­niz­ing that Atkins barred the death penal­ty In such cir­cum­stances, Weiner said, “[w]e today have no choice but to con­done just such an unconstitutional punishment.” 

The Fifth Circuit’s deci­sion was sub­se­quent­ly over­turned, and Webster — incar­cer­at­ed on fed­er­al death row in Terra Haute, Indiana — was per­mit­ted to present the evi­dence to an Indiana fed­er­al court. Webster’s habeas cor­pus lawyer, Steven Wells, called Judge Lawrence’s rul­ing ​“a ground­break­ing and just out­come for Mr. Webster, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled man who nev­er should have been sen­tenced to death.” Federal pros­e­cu­tors said they are still con­sid­er­ing whether to appeal the decision.

In 2008, more than a decade after Webster was con­vict­ed, a pri­vate law firm took on his case pro bono and dis­cov­ered Social Security records that his tri­al lawyers had tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to obtain. ​“The Social Security Administration failed to pro­vide infor­ma­tion crit­i­cal to Mr. Webster’s defense, despite the request,” Wells said. ​“The gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to pur­sue his exe­cu­tion even after being made aware of the new evi­dence.” The Social Security records includ­ed an appli­ca­tion for ben­e­fits pre­dat­ing the time of the mur­der in which Webster was deemed eli­gi­ble for ben­e­fits because of dis­abil­i­ty. The records con­tained a state­ment by a psy­chol­o­gist that described Webster’s intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing as ​“quite lim­it­ed,” not­ing that a form he filled out was ​“rife with errors in syn­tax, spelling, punc­tu­a­tion, gram­mar, and thought.” Judge Lawrence wrote, ​“The appli­ca­tion mate­ri­als revealed that Webster was bare­ly lit­er­ate.” He ruled that Webster had proven ​“by a pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence” that he is intellectually disabled.

With the vaca­tion of Webster’s death sen­tence, six­ty fed­er­al pris­on­ers now face active death sen­tences. Thirteen pris­on­ers whom fed­er­al juries had sen­tenced to death have since been resen­tenced to life with­out parole after courts found their death sen­tences had been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed. The fed­er­al death sen­tences imposed on Ronell Wilson and Paul Hardy were vacat­ed and Arboleda Ortiz​’s death sen­tence was com­mut­ed because of intellectual disability.