On Monday, March 30, the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed review of three Kansas death penal­ty cas­es and heard oral argu­ment in a Louisiana case that pre­sent­ed ques­tions on the role of the fed­er­al courts in deter­min­ing whether a state pris­on­er who faces the death penal­ty has intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. In the cas­es of Kansas v. Reginald Carr, Kansas v. Jonathan Carr, and Kansas v. Sidney Gleason, the Court grant­ed review of the Kansas Supreme Court’s deci­sions over­turn­ing the defen­dants’ death sen­tences because their sen­tenc­ing juries were not told that, unlike proof of oth­er facts in the case, the defen­dant did not have to prove mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances (rea­sons for life) beyond a rea­son­able doubt. It also grant­ed review in the Carr cas­es of the state court’s deci­sion that the broth­ers should not have been tried togeth­er in the penal­ty phase of their cap­i­tal tri­al because some of their mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence was mutu­al­ly antag­o­nis­tic and the jury should not have con­sid­ered this evi­dence against the oth­er broth­er. In Brumfield v. Cain, the Court heard argu­ment in the case of a Louisiana man, Kevan Brumfield, sen­tenced to death before the Supreme Court rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia banned the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion (now intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty). (For more on the Brumfield case, click here.) The Supreme Court will deter­mine whether the fed­er­al courts must defer to a deci­sion of the state courts that reject­ed his claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty based sole­ly upon the evi­dence pre­sent­ed at his tri­al or whether to cred­it the fed­er­al dis­trict court’s find­ing after a sev­en-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing that Mr. Brumfield is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and may not be executed.

(A. Hamm, ​“Breaking News,” SCOTUSblog, March 30, 2015, 9:46 a.m., L. Denniston, ​“Argument analy­sis: The record’s the thing — unfor­tu­nate­ly,” SCOTUSblog, March 30, 2015.) See Intellectual Disability and U.S. Supreme Court.

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