PENRY DEATH SENTENCE OVERTURNED
The ruling overturned the death sentence of Johnny Paul
Penry, whose lawyers claim their client has the mind of
a 7-year-old and likes to play with coloring books.
The case, sent back to a federal appeals court, does not
answer a larger question about whether execution of the
mentally retarded is constitutional. The court has agreed
to use a different case to review that question next tail.
The vote was 6-3 on the crucial question of the
instructions, although the court was unanimous in ruling
that a Texas court properly admitted evidence of Penry's
future dangerousness.
Penry was convicted of murdering Pamela Moseley
Carpenter in Texas in 1979. She was the sister of former
Washington Redskins place-kicker Mark Moseley.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority,
said the instructions to the jury were "constitutionally
inadequate" to protect Penry's rights and did not follow
previous court instructions in death penalty cases.
The instructions left no vehicle for expressing the view
that Penry did not deserve the death penalty based on
mitigating evidence, she said.
The Texas Legislature recently passed a bill banning the
execution of mentally retarded people. Gov. Rick Perry
hasn't said whether he will sign it.
The Supreme Court made headlines last fall when it
accepted Penry's latest appeal, in part because death
penalty opponents say juries too often get inadequate
instructions and in part because of Penry's own
notoriety.
Penry has been in the forefront of the debate over capital
punishment almost from the moment he confessed to
killing Carpenter.
After a complicated and highly publicized passage
through the Texas courts, the Supreme Court accepted
his first appeal and in 1989 used his case to establish
two related tenets of capital punishment practice.
The court ruled then that execution of the mentally
retarded is constitutional, but juries considering the
death penalty must understand how to weigh retardation
as a mitigating factor.
Penry's case returned to the Texas courts, where his
lawyers claim the second jury that sentenced him to
death got no better instructions than the first.
That is the question the Supreme Court agreed to review
in his case, but it soon became a sidelight.
One day before the justices heard arguments in Penry's
case in March, they raised the stakes much higher by
agreeing to hear a separate North Carolina case that asks
the same question Penry did 12 years ago: Does
executing the mentally retarded violate the Eighth
Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual
punishment?
If the court reverses itself with that case and declares
that the retarded must be spared, the issue of proper
death penalty jury instructions would be irrelevant.
At issue for the court this time was whether the Texas
jury that imposed Penry's second death sentence
understood its options.
Texas authorities claimed the instructions were clear.
and that the jury knew it could impose a life sentence
instead of death.
Penry's lawyers claimed the instructions failed the test
the Supreme Court set out with its 1989 ruling in what
has become known as Penry I.
Texas resentenced Penry in 1990, using the same verdict
form as in the first trial. The form asked whether Penry
deliberately killed the woman, whether he was provoked
and whether he was a continuing threat to society.
The judge added an instruction that if other
circumstances warranted a life sentence instead of death,
jurors should answer "no" to one of those questions even
if the actual answer was "yes.
The jury answered "yes" to all questions. Texas
authorities and the family of his victim remain
convinced he understood his crime and should die for it.
Penry was on parole for rape when he was arrested in
1979 and charged with murdering Carpenter, 22.
Carpenter was stabbed in the chest with scissors
she had been using to make Halloween decorations, but
was able to describe her attacker before dying.
The case is Penry v. Johnson, 00-6677.
June 4,2001, 10:46AM Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Jurors who sentenced a retarded
killer to death in Texas did not get clear instructions
about how to weigh the defendant's mental abilities
against the severity of his crime, the Supreme Court
ruled today.