California killer claiming autism supports Atkins claim to preclude execution

This article from San Jose Mercury News reports on a notable effort by a killer on death row to raise a unique argument as part of an Atkins Eighth Amendment claim to prevent his execution.  This piece is headlined "California death penalty and mental retardation: Condemned killer seeks reprieve," and here are excerpts:

More than six years ago, it appeared that condemned Santa Clara County killer David Allen Raley had run out of legal options to avoid execution. After two decades of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected Raley's seemingly final challenge to his 1988 death sentence for murdering a Peninsula teenager and attempting to murder her high school friend.

But as is often the case for California's death row inmates, Raley's legal odyssey is far from over. Armed with a new order from the California Supreme Court, Raley has revived his appeals with a claim that he was mentally retarded at the time of his 1985 crime -- a finding that would spare him from execution under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

On Monday, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Linda Clark will start a special two-week hearing in Raley's case, which among other evidence has raised the unique claim that he is autistic and therefore falls under the legal protections against executing the mentally retarded. Clark will issue a recommendation to the state Supreme Court, which will make a final decision on Raley's fate.

In the meantime, Raley's legal team argues the 51-year-old death row inmate should spend the rest of his life in prison for the 1985 murder of Jeanine Grinsell and the attempted murder of her close friend, Laurie McKenna, inside a deserted Hillsborough mansion. "It is very true that David Raley is significantly developmentally disabled," said Robert Bacon, one of Raley's lawyers....

In court papers submitted to Clark, prosecutors branded Raley's argument a belated legal Hail Mary to avoid lethal injection and scoffed at the suggestion he is mentally disabled, noting his IQ tests were never below the standard threshold for mental retardation. "(Raley) acted alone in committing these horrible crimes and the facts elicited at trial show evidence of premeditation, cunning and problem solving, all characteristics inconsistent with a diagnosis of intellectual disability," prosecutors wrote.

Raley's case is part of an increasingly common legal battle unfolding in recent years in California and other death penalty states, the result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. The high court left it to the states to sort out which death row inmates or defendants facing capital murder charges may fall under the murky definition of mental retardation, forcing courts to grapple with evaluating whether there is clear proof of the disability before the age of 18.

The California Supreme Court has issued orders in dozens of cases like Raley's in which death row inmates have made the claim, often decades after a crime and death sentence. These include Bay Area condemned killers Walter Cook, from San Mateo County, and Robert Young and Delaney Marks, sent to death row from Alameda County. Courts have also spared some murderers from the death penalty at trial, including convicted San Jose cop killer DeShawn Campbell, who was found to be mentally retarded and sent to prison for life....

Death penalty supporters say claims such as Raley's are contributing to the legal morass. "The fuzziness in the definition of retardation" has given death row inmates another avenue to contest their sentences, "even though generally meritless" said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

But Raley's supporters say his case is an example of the state spending too much time and money on the death penalty. The American Civil Liberties Union cites his mental disability and costly appeals as reason to abandon capital punishment. "He's not the worst of the worst," Bacon added. "The interests of public safety could be served with life in prison without the possibility of parole."