The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed the exe­cu­tion of Robert Campbell just hours before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on May 13, grant­i­ng him per­mis­sion to file a new peti­tion on his claim of men­tal retar­da­tion. If Campbell is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, he is barred from exe­cu­tion by the Supreme Court’s 2002 rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia. The unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el not­ed that Texas author­i­ties had with­held IQ test results from Campbell and mis­led his attor­neys: ​“Throughout this lit­i­ga­tion in the state and fed­er­al courts regard­ing Campbell’s abil­i­ty to assert an Atkins claim on the mer­its, the State nev­er dis­closed that it was in pos­ses­sion of evi­dence of three intel­li­gence tests sug­gest­ing that Campbell was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled.” State files con­tained the results of IQ tests includ­ing one from Campbell’s child­hood, with a score of 68, and one from short­ly after his arrival on death row at age 19, with a score of 71. Robert Owen, an attor­ney for Campbell, said, ​“It’s very clear now that the evi­dence strong­ly sup­ports the diag­no­sis of men­tal retar­da­tion for Mr. Campbell, and it might be best for every­one for the state to give up its pur­suit of exe­cut­ing him and resolve this case by reduc­ing his death sen­tence to life impris­on­ment rather than face the prospect of months or years of further litigation.”

Campbell’s attor­neys had also filed a chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injec­tion secre­cy laws, but the Fifth Circuit declined to inter­vene on those grounds.

(M. Fernandez and J. Schwartz, ​“Appeals Court Grants Stay of Execution in Texas Based on Mental Disability Claim,” New York Times, May 13, 2014; In re Campbell, No. 14 – 20293 (5th Cir., May 13, 2014)). See Intellectual Disability and Supreme Court. Listen to DPIC’s pocast on men­tal prob­lems.

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