New law helps keep Georgians with intellectual disabilities off death row
ATLANTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - A bill signed into law Tuesday by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp would make it easier to keep people with intellectual disabilities off death row when they’re convicted of a crime.
HB 123 lowers the legal threshold for proving a person has an intellectual disability in the courtroom. Prior to the bill being signed, it had to be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the highest threshold for evidence. Now, under HB 123, it must be proven “by preponderance of evidence,” a much lower standard of proof.
Georgia first outlawed capital punishment for people with proven intellectual disabilities in 1988, but the standard of proof remained among the most difficult in the nation to achieve. A 2002 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment for people with proven intellectual disabilities nationwide, but left it up to individual states to determine the threshold for proving a disability in court. Until Tuesday, Georgia remained the only state where it must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“It’s an enormous, momentous achievement,” said Cathy Harmon-Christian, executive director of the group Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “It just shows a kind of lift in who we are as people and in our humanity, because every other state and the Supreme Court agrees that we can hold people with intellectual disabilities able for their crimes without having to kill them.”
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The new law also moves the proceeding to determine intellectual disability ahead of a formal trial, not during it, meaning a person’s mental capacity is determined right away.
“They will be able to have a sense of where this is going earlier,” said Harmon-Christian, who noted the importance of going into a trial knowing a person’s ability to mount a defense for themselves.
“How can they their lawyer to give the best testimony when perhaps they don’t have the intellectual capacity to be able to do that?” she said. “And they also tend to have behaviors that may not encourage them to be able to their own case.”
Harmon-Christian says people have undoubtedly slipped through the cracks onto death row even if they aren’t ruled to have an intellectual disability in court. For instance, Willie Pye, a Georgia man who was executed in March 2024, had an IQ of 68 but was found to be competent to stand trial with capital punishment on the line.
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The bill isn’t arguing for the abolition of the death penalty in Georgia, only that it become easier to prove a defendant’s status as someone with an intellectual disability.
“It definitely is something good for people with disabilities – intellectual disabilities,” said state Rep. Matt Reeves, R–Duluth, a co-sponsor of the bill and an attorney. “There still would be the death penalty for cold-blooded killers, but this gives due process according to what the law of the land says here in Georgia.”
The law is not retroactive. Georgia currently has 34 inmates remaining on death row, and none of them are eligible for appeal under HB 123. Unlike some bills signed by the governor which take effect July 1, HB 123 became active law when Kemp signed it Tuesday.
Kemp has only tomorrow to sign or veto bills. So far he hasn’t vetoed any since the legislative session ended in early April.
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