The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider Georgia’s standard that lawyers contend makes it all but impossible for intellectually disabled capital defendants to prove they are intellectually disabled.
Georgia is the nation’s only state with the death penalty that requires defendants to clear the highest legal threshold — beyond a reasonable doubt — to prove their intellectual disability claims.
The high court’s decision lets stand the death sentence imposed in 2012 by a Newton County jury against Rodney Young for killing his ex-fiancée’s 28-year-old son. Young’s lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to convince jurors Young was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for capital punishment.
