Mental Retardation

A working group of attorneys and experts with long experience representing and evaluating capital defendants clients with mental retardation has just released an updated manual on this subject. The Practitioners Guide to Defending Capital Clients Who Have Mental Retardation walks capital defense attorneys through the process of investigating and litigating the issue of mental retardation before, during or after trial. This invaluable resource is the best available starting-point for investigating and proving mental retardation as a bar to your clients execution under Atkins v. Virginia.

Virginia is virtually the only state which by statute, Va. Code Sec. 19.2-264-.3:1.2 appears to delay the determination of whether the defendant is ineligible for the death penalty by reason of mental retardation to the jury's actual capital sentencing deliberations. VC3 has produced a Memorandum in Support of a Pre-Trial Determination of Mental Retardation which may be of use to attorneys wanting to raise a mental retardation claim in the fairer and more efficient setting of a pretrial hearing.

Posted here is the complete transcript of the mental retardation portions of the sentencing hearing in Commonwealth v. Prieto (Fairfax 2008).