A New Jersey U.S. dis­trict court judge has barred fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty against Farad Roland, find­ing that Roland is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. After an eigh­teen-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing fea­tur­ing six­teen wit­ness­es, Judge Esther Salas ruled on December 18 that Roland — accused of five killings in con­nec­tion with a drug-traf­fick­ing gang — had ​“abun­dant­ly sat­is­fied his bur­den of prov­ing his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty by a pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence.” In 2002 in Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that sub­ject­ing indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty to the death penal­ty vio­lat­ed the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. Judge Salas’s rul­ing came almost exact­ly ten years after New Jersey abol­ished the death penal­ty, and end­ed efforts to obtain what would have been the first death sen­tence imposed in the state since abo­li­tion. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment may seek the death penal­ty in fed­er­al court under fed­er­al law, irre­spec­tive of whether the state in which the fed­er­al tri­al takes place itself autho­rizes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The only oth­er fed­er­al death-penal­ty case that has been tried in New Jersey end­ed with a life sen­tence in May 2007. Roland’s was the third fed­er­al cap­i­tal case in the last year in which a defen­dant was spared the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. In June 2017, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors announced they would not appeal a New York fed­er­al dis­trict court’s deter­mi­na­tion that for­mer death-row pris­on­er Ronell Wilson is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Wilson had faced a cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing hear­ing after his 2007 fed­er­al death sen­tence was over­turned as a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. In January 2017, President Barack Obama com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz, in part because of evi­dence that Ortiz is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Judge Salas found that Roland had sat­is­fied all three prongs of the test to deter­mine Intellectual Disability: “(1) intel­lec­tu­al-func­tion­ing deficits (indi­cat­ed by an IQ score approx­i­mate­ly two stan­dard devi­a­tions below the mean — i.e., a score of rough­ly 70 — adjust­ed for the stan­dard error of mea­sure­ment); (2) adap­tive deficits (the inabil­i­ty to learn basic skills and adjust behav­ior to chang­ing cir­cum­stances); and (3) the onset of these deficits while still a minor.” Accordingly, she con­clud­ed, ​“Roland is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty under the Eighth Amendment and the FDPA [Federal Death Penalty Act].” In com­ments to NJ Advance Media, Roland’s attor­ney, Richard Jasper, called Judge Salas’s deci­sion ​“a thor­ough, detailed, thought­ful 135 page opin­ion that speaks for itself.”

(T. Moriarty, ​“Accused N.J. gang leader inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, judge rules,” NJ Advance Media, December 18, 2017.) Read the rul­ing in United States v. Farad Roland. See Federal Death Penalty and Intellectual Disability.

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