NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Nashville’s lead prosecutor says he agrees with defense attorneys that a death row inmate is intellectually disabled and should not face execution.
District Attorney Glenn Funk made the assessment in a filing this week that determines Byron Black should instead face a sentence of life in prison. The inmate’s attorneys are arguing the 65-year-old should be spared under a 2021 law that made Tennessee’s prohibition against executing people with intellectual disability retroactive. Previously, Tennessee had no mechanism for an inmate to reopen a case to press an intellectual disability claim.
Black is currently scheduled to be executed on Aug. 18. The district attorney’s statements came in a filing responding to a motion by Black’s attorneys, who are asking a judge to determine that the inmate has an intellectual disability that prohibits his execution.
Now the judge has to review the filings and decide whether to set aside the death verdict and resentence Black.
The district attorney’s filing says there is a different standard in place now than in 2004, when the court found that Black didn’t meet the now-obsolete definition of “mental retardation.”