Sonny Boy Oats Found Ineligible for the Death Penalty After 40 Years on Florida’s Death Row

After more than 40 years on Florida​’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pic­tured), one of the nation’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers, has been found inel­i­gi­ble for the death penalty.

On April 2, 2021, a Marion County tri­al court vacat­ed Oats’ death sen­tence and resen­tenced him to life in prison, accept­ing a stip­u­la­tion between pros­e­cu­tors and the defense that Oats is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. In February 2020, Ric Ridgway, Chief Assistant in the Florida Fifth Circuit State Attorney’s office, advised Circuit Judge Steven Rogers that pros­e­cu­tors would not con­test Oats’ claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, after eight of nine men­tal health experts who had eval­u­at­ed Oats con­clud­ed he is intellectually disabled. 

With the con­sent of the par­ties, the court delayed resen­tenc­ing Oats for more than a year because of coro­n­avirus-relat­ed health con­cerns. Rogers’ order indi­cat­ed that the court ​“pro­ceed­ed with the resen­tenc­ing at this time, giv­en the under­stand­ing that the Defendant has request­ed and will soon receive a COVID-19 vac­cine.” Once he is vac­ci­nat­ed, Oats will be removed from death-row isolated confinement.

Oats was con­vict­ed of rob­bery and mur­der in February 1981 and was sen­tenced to death. He was tried and con­vict­ed one year lat­er of anoth­er robbery/​murder in which he received a life sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court over­turned his death sen­tence in 1984, find­ing that the tri­al judge had con­sid­ered three invalid aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances. Without empan­el­ing a new jury, the tri­al court reim­posed the death penal­ty, which the Florida Supreme Court upheld in 1985.

In 1990, Oats sought to over­turn his death sen­tence on the grounds that his tri­al coun­sel had failed to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence that Oats was men­tal­ly retard­ed (now known as intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled). After an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, the pros­e­cu­tion con­ced­ed that Oats met the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and was ​“mild­ly men­tal­ly retard­ed.” Nonetheless, the tri­al court denied Oats’ ineffectiveness claim.

Nearly a decade lat­er, in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Atkins v. Virginia that it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to impose or car­ry out the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Oats then filed a new claim under Atkins, which the tri­al court denied on the grounds that Oats had not been diag­nosed as intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled before the age of 18. The court refused to con­sid­er the evi­dence of Oats’ intel­lec­tu­al impair­ments and deficits in dai­ly func­tion­ing that he had pre­sent­ed in the 1990 hear­ing. The Florida Supreme Court reversed that rul­ing in 2015 and returned the case to the tri­al court to con­duct a new evi­den­tiary hear­ing. The court not­ed: ​“Based on numer­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal tests, Oats’s IQ is between 54 and 67, well with­in the range for an indi­vid­ual who has an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Up until the cur­rent lit­i­ga­tion, expert after expert con­sis­tent­ly rec­og­nized that Oats has an intellectual disability.”

That remand order led to the state attorney’s con­ces­sion that Oats was inel­i­gi­ble for the death penalty.