The Supreme Court considered a death row inmate’s case on Wednesday in which he is trying to pursue a second bid to avoid execution, claiming that because of a change in the standards for intellectual disabilities since his first attempt, he should be spared from capital punishment.
The high court heard oral arguments in Guerrero v. Johnson, which deals with Dexter Johnson’s effort to get a second conviction review of his death sentence using a narrow legal loophole. Under federal law, death row inmates are typically only allowed one round of post-conviction appeals over their sentence unless one of two exceptions applies, including if the second argument relies on a new constitutional rule that was not available when the inmate went through the first appeals process. Johnson has argued that he cannot be put to death due to the 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which found that it is unconstitutional to execute intellectually disabled people, even though his first appeal came years later, because a change since then to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has now categorized his IQ as intellectually disabled.
