After 27 Years on Death Row, California Man's Sentence Reduced to Life

California prosecutors and defense attorneys recently agreed that Calvin Coleman, Jr., a man sentenced to death for murder in 1980, is mentally retarded and therefore exempt from capital punishment. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision that declared execution of mentally retarded individuals unconstitutional (Atkins v. Virginia), California modified its laws in 2005 to conform to the ruling. Coleman is the first person about whom both the prosecution and the defense agreed that he met the conditions. Some cases have been rejected while others are still pending.

The determination began with months of gathering records and testing the defendant on death row. California’s new law defines retardation as “significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning” with “deficits in adaptive behavior” before the age of 18; it does not use a strict IQ standard. Prosecutor Rob LaForge said his office gathered thousands of documents, “essentially going back to the birth of Mr. Coleman until now,” to assess his mental status. One of Coleman’s attorneys, Michael Charlson, said, “I give credit to the District Attorney’s Office here. They did their own testing and reached a conclusion consistent with what we contended. They did the right thing when the facts became known.”

Records showed that Coleman had a history of mental deficits, first noted in court records at the age of 13. The initial cause may have been brain damage resulting from a car crash in 1971 and an alleged blow to the head from a counselor at a youth facility. His IQ tests have ranged from the mid-60’s at the age of 13 to 72 as an adult. Attorney Charlson commented, “Whatever a person’s view on the death penalty, I don’t think anyone would dispute that it needs to be administered in a fair way.”
( L. Carter, "Killer’s death penalty tossed --- D.A., defense agree man in ’80 Healdsburg slaying is mentally deficient, ineligible for execution,” Press Democrat, August 28, 2008). See Mental Retardation and Arbitrariness. In some states, Coleman would have been executed many years ago.