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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
HARRISBURG - The months turned into years, but still Daniel and Lieselotte Killoran waited for the day the man who stabbed their 23-year-old daughter to death would be executed.
That day will never come.
Arthur Faulkner, a Philadelphia laborer, spent 14 years on death row after he went on a bloody rampage in 1988 at a Lower Merion archaeology site where he worked as a digger.
Armed with a knife, he sexually assaulted and killed a 30-year-old coworker before catching Annaliese Killoran as she tried to escape - stabbing her to death as she curled into a fetal position. Faulkner then stabbed two of his bosses multiple times, including a pregnant woman whose child was born mentally retarded because of the attack.
But Faulkner and three others on Pennsylvania's death row successfully petitioned to have their death sentences vacated and were resentenced to life in prison after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2002 banned the execution of the mentally retarded.
The high court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia has opened the door to as many as two dozen appeals by Pennsylvania's death row inmates, leaving murder victims' families such as the Killorans wondering how many more death sentences will be thrown out.
"I'm very dissatisfied with the results," Daniel Killoran said, speaking by phone from his home outside Boston. "There is nothing further I can do except hire an assassin, which I would do if I knew any assassins." In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court found that execution of the mentally retarded violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
State legislatures were left to decide the most sensitive questions: how to define who is mentally retarded and who determines a defendant's mental status. Without legal standards on mental retardation, such decisions fall to individual judges.
Of the 38 states that have the death penalty, 18 had laws forbidding the execution of the mentally retarded at the time the Supreme Court ruling and four have enacted laws since the decision. New Jersey and Pennsylvania are among the remaining states where bills are pending.
Two separate bills are moving through the Pennsylvania legislature, but a fundamental difference remains between the House and Senate versions: whether a judge or a jury will decide whether a defendant is mentally retarded.
The legislature's delay has left a host of death-penalty appeal cases in judicial limbo and underscores the deep divisions that exist over the definition of mental retardation.
The Senate bill, which was approved last month, has pitted the ACLU, religious groups and advocates for the mentally retarded against prosecutors and victims' families.
Under the Senate bill, sponsored by the legislature's most vocal death penalty opponent, Sen. Edward Helfrick (R., Northumberland), a defendant's mental status would be determined by a judge before a trial. The House version, supported by the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, would require a post-conviction decision by a jury. The House version was voted out of committee but has yet to reach a floor vote.
An unusual compromise now under discussion would create a two-tiered system, giving judges the responsibility of determining the sentence at a pretrial hearing in cases where the defendant is shown to have an IQ below 60. In cases where the defendant shows an IQ of between 61 and 70, a capital trial would proceed and the jury would decide whether that individual is mentally retarded.
"Nobody wants the mentally retarded to be put to death," said Helfrick, who has fought for this legislation for nine years. "But everybody has a different idea about who's mentally retarded. It's not an exacting science, but courts needed guidelines. I think our legislation does that."
Kate Philips, Gov. Rendell's press secretary, said he "supports the concept" of the Helfrick bill, but will wait to see what the final bill looks like before deciding whether he will sign it.
In Helfrick's bill, the defendant must have an IQ of 70 or below and show impaired ability in two or more life-skill areas, such as communication or self care. The defense also must prove that mental retardation manifested itself before the age of 18.
The bill allows defendants, such as Faulkner, who claim they are mentally retarded and have already been sentenced to death, to ask that their cases be reviewed. Supporters, such as the ACLU and advocate groups, like the idea of a pretrial hearing because it would save the expense of a costly capital trial.
Prosecutors say they fear that the Senate bill would create a new class of "newly retarded" defendants trying to escape death by claiming they are mentally retarded.
"You only receive the death penalty if you are convicted of premeditated murder," said Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr., who last year reluctantly agreed that Faulkner's sentence be vacated and yesterday made a similar decision in another death-penalty case. "I do not believe that someone with the mental capacity to carry out a murder is mentally retarded."
Gary Tennis, chief of legislation for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, fears that even a serial killer, such as Harrison "Marty" Graham, who received the death penalty in the strangulation deaths of seven Philadelphia women in 1987, could have his sentence reduced to life. A court hearing for Graham is scheduled for July 8.
"If a defendant gets in front of the right judge, he's in the money," Tennis said. But Helfrick said his bill sets a high bar that defendants must clear to escape the death penalty. "You can't just commit a crime and say that you are mentally retarded. It starts at birth," he said.
Roughly 10 percent of the 244 people on death row in Pennsylvania are believed to be mentally retarded, and many of them are already seeking relief under the Atkins ruling, prosecutors say. New Jersey has only 15 death row inmates, none of whom are thought to be mentally retarded.
Yesterday, the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas vacated the 1998 death sentence imposed on Nathan Scott on the grounds that he is retarded.
Prosecutors say that with the absence of any clear guidance from the legislature, judges are free to vacate death sentences involving those who claim to be mentally retarded.
Castor said the death penalty may be legal in Pennsylvania, but with so few executions carried out - the last was Gary Heidnik in 1999 - the pain for families is the same with or without a law regarding the mentally retarded.
"Families are left out hanging for years and years with the constant challenges," he said. "There is no end to the terrible wounds they've suffered."
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