Taken Off Death Row in 2014, Intellectually Disabled South Carolina Man Now Gets New Trial

South Carolina pros­e­cu­tors announced on July 25 that they would not appeal a tri­al court rul­ing, grant­i­ng a new, non-cap­i­tal tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Kenneth Simmons (pic­tured). Finding that pros­e­cu­tors had pre­sent­ed false DNA tes­ti­mo­ny that ​“severe­ly deprived” Simmons of his due process rights, a Dorchester County Circuit Judge over­turned Simmons’s conviction. 

Simmons had been sen­tenced to death for the 1996 sex­u­al assault and mur­der of an elder­ly woman based on false and mis­lead­ing DNA tes­ti­mo­ny that pur­port­ed to link him to the mur­der and a con­fes­sion obtained under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that apply­ing the death penal­ty to per­sons with Intellectual Disability vio­lates the Eighth Amendment pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. Simmons’s death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2014 and replaced with a life sen­tence after the South Carolina Supreme Court deter­mined that he has Intellectual Disability. 

Prosecutors had ini­tial­ly asked Judge Doyet A. Early III to alter his 2016 deci­sion grant­i­ng Simmons a new tri­al. On June 23, he declined, reaf­firm­ing his find­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion’s ​“mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the strength of the DNA evi­dence to the jury” was ​“over­whelm­ing,” giv­en that the con­fes­sion had been extract­ed from ​“an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled man, after mul­ti­ple non-record­ed inter­ro­ga­tions, [who] had false­ly con­fessed to oth­er crimes before con­fess­ing to the murder.” 

Judge Early wrote that the pros­e­cu­tion had pre­sent­ed the jury with ​“con­fus­ing, mis­lead­ing, and inac­cu­rate” infor­ma­tion about the DNA evi­dence, includ­ing show­ing the jury a chart that con­tained fab­ri­cat­ed DNA results, using the chart to make addi­tion­al incor­rect claims about the DNA evi­dence dur­ing clos­ing argu­ments, and false­ly argu­ing that Simmons was the only pos­si­ble source of the DNA. During state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings, the state’s foren­sic wit­ness recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny about the DNA, and the court found that her tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny ​“had no evi­den­tiary val­ue in iden­ti­fy­ing” Simmons. 

Simmons’s efforts to obtain a new tri­al drew sup­port from The Innocence Network and advo­ca­cy groups for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, which stressed the increased risk of false con­fes­sions and wrong­ful con­vic­tion in cas­es with intel­lec­tu­al­ly disabled defendants.

In 2000, Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder com­mut­ed the death sen­tence imposed on anoth­er intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row pris­on­er, Earl Washington, who had false­ly con­fessed to a rape and mur­der after DNA test­ing sug­gest­ed he had not com­mit­ted the offens­es. Governor Jim Gilmore lat­er grant­ed Washington a com­plete par­don after addi­tion­al DNA test­ing exclud­ed him as the rapist. 

In 2014, two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled broth­ers, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were freed because of evi­dence uncov­ered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, three decades after hav­ing been sen­tenced to death for the rape and mur­der of an 11-year-old girl. Both had been sub­ject­ed to coer­cive inter­ro­ga­tions and said they were unaware they were sign­ing a confession.