Execution of Inmate With Limited Mental Abilities May Proceed

A U.S. Supreme Court holding that defendants who are intellectually disabled can’t be executed doesn’t prevent carrying out the sentence against an Ohio death-row inmate, the en banc Sixth Circuit said.

Danny Hill was convicted in 1986 for killing a 12-year-old boy. The court determined that he had diminished mental capacity but sentenced him to death.

At the time of Hill’s sentencing, a defendant’s mental capacity was only a mitigating factor for courts to determine whether the death penalty was appropriate. But in 2002, the Supreme Court decided in Atkins v. Virginia, that it’s unconstitutional to execute the intellectually ...