NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s conservative attorney general and Nashville’s liberal district attorney are at odds over whether a death row inmate is intellectually disabled and consequently should not be executed.
The case involves Byron Black, a 66-year-old inmate convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6. Prosecutors said Black was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work release while serving time for shooting and wounding Clay’s estranged husband.
Black previously sought to prove he was intellectually disabled in 2004, but that claim was rejected at the state and federal court level. Since then, other cases in both state and federal court have led to more finely tuned criteria for determining intellectual disability.
Tennessee enacted a new law last year stating clearly that no defendant with an intellectual disability at the time of their crime can be executed. The law is retroactive, but with a catch. A defendant cannot file a new disability claim “if the issue of whether the defendant has an intellectual disability has been previously adjudicated on the merits.”
Nonetheless, Black filed a motion shortly after the new law took effect, asking the court to declare that he is intellectually disabled. He has argued that the prohibition on filing a new claim should not apply to him because the law itself, including how intellectual disability is defined, has changed. The “issue” is different because the legal standard is different, his attorneys argue.