Earl Berry is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on May 21 in Mississippi, despite evi­dence that he has men­tal retar­da­tion. Judicial review of this evi­dence has been denied because his for­mer lawyers failed to file the evi­dence in a time­ly fash­ion. This would be the sec­ond exe­cu­tion since the U.S. Supreme Court approved Kentucky’s method of lethal injec­tion on April 16. Last month, a psy­chol­o­gist con­clud­ed that Berry had an IQ of 75 or below and ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly sub-aver­age intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing and … meets the cri­te­ria to be clas­si­fied as men­tal­ly retard­ed.” The U.S. Supreme Court banned exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal retar­da­tion in Atkins v. Virginia (2002).
Affidavits describe Berry’s slow devel­op­ment, head injuries sus­tained as a child, mul­ti­ple sui­cide attempts, and that, even as an adult, he was nev­er able to live inde­pen­dent­ly. When Berry was dis­charged from a Mississippi prison hos­pi­tal at 25, his release fol­lowed a sui­cide attempt and he was diag­nosed with ​“sui­ci­dal gestures/​mentally retard­ed.” During his school years, Berry’s IQ was test­ed at 72. In 1992, a psy­chol­o­gist also tes­ti­fied that Berry suf­fered from paranoid schizophrenia.

(Amnesty International, ​“Death Penalty/​Legal Concern: Earl Wesley Berry,” www​.amnesty​.org, May 13, 2008; see also (Miss.) Daily Journal, May16, 2008). See Mental Retardation and Mental Illness.

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