Entries tagged with “Rodney Young”
Issues
Jan 11, 2022
Disability Rights Groups, Legal Experts, and Conservative Advocates Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Georgia’s Uniquely Harsh Proof Requirements in Death-Penalty Intellectual Disability Cases
A coalition of disability rights groups, legal experts, and conservative advocates are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the uniquely harsh burden of proof Georgia has imposed upon defendants seeking to establish their ineligibility for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. In four friend-of-the-court briefs filed in late December 2021, two former U.S. solicitors general, eight former prosecutors and judges, seven leading disability rights organizations, scholars…
Issues
Jun 11, 2021
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds ‘Uniquely High and Onerous’ Burden of Proving Intellectual Disability in Death Penalty Cases
The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory requirement that a capital defendant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is intellectually disabled before being declared ineligible for the death penalty. In an 8 – 1 ruling issued on June 1, 2021, the Georgia high court affirmed the conviction and death sentence imposed on Rodney Young. Young had argued that requiring a capital defendant to meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard — the…
Issues
Jun 07, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of May 31, 2021
NEWS (6/4/21) — Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Lynch v. Arizona, which struck down the state’s unconstitutional refusal to instruct capital-sentencing juries that defendants who are sentenced to life are not eligible for parole, does not provide grounds for a death-row prisoner to seek new state-court review of that issue. The court dismissed an attempt by John Cruz to raise the issue, saying that his prior lawyers had failed to…
Issues
Mar 26, 2021
Georgia Supreme Court Asked to Overturn ‘Nearly Impossible’ Evidentiary Burden of Proving Intellectual Disability
The Georgia Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the uniquely high burden of proof the state imposes on capital defendants and death-row prisoners to determine whether they are ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. On March 23, 2021, the court heard argument in a case brought by Rodney Young, a death-row prisoner who asserts that Georgia’s harsh standard unconstitutionally subjects defendants with intellectual disability to capital prosecution and possible…