In a 29-page ruling, the judges — U.S. Circuit Judges Adalberto Jordan; Charles Wilson, and Elizabeth Branch — said they found no reason to overturn U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker's finding that the DOC failed to accommodate Matthew Reeves' intellectual disabilities when giving inmates the chance to die by nitrogen hypoxia. Huffaker ruled that violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
"Notably, this is not a case where a defendant has asked a district court to enjoin a state from executing him altogether, regardless of the method of execution," the three-judge panel wrote. "Mr. Reeves requested only that the court prevent the ADOC from executing him by any method other than the one he would have chosen but for the defendants’ alleged violation of the ADA, pending resolution of his ADA claim."
The Alabama attorney general's office said Wednesday it would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Jordan was appointed by President Barack Obama; Wilson was appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Branch was appointed by President Donald Trump.
Reeves, 44, is scheduled to die on Thursday for the 1996 murder of Willie Johnson in Selma. According to court documents, Reeves and some companions were driving on Nov. 27, 1996, planning to commit a robbery, when their car broke down. Johnson gave Reeves a tow and a ride. Reeves shot Johnson as he stopped at a stoplight and told other passengers to search his pockets for money.
Attorneys for Reeves say he has a tested IQ in the upper 60s or lower 70s, and that Reeves' counsel at his first trial failed to hire an expert who could testify to that fact, despite receiving funds to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Reeves' claim of ineffective counsel last summer.
The current appeal rests on a law passed by the Alabama Legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in 2018. The bill authorized DOC to conduct executions with nitrogen hypoxia, a method never used before. In June of that year, the DOC gave death row inmates a chance to decide whether they wanted to die by the new method. Inmates interviewed by the Advertiser in 2019 described a chaotic process, with inmates have a few days to contact attorneys on the matter.
Reeves did not opt into the execution method. His attorneys said Reeves' intellectual disabilities prevented him from understanding the choice before him, and that DOC had documentation of those issues and should have accommodated him. The attorney general's office argued Reeves never demonstrated that he would have chosen execution by nitrogen hypoxia and that he had not pleaded in time for accommodation.
Huffaker ruled earlier this month that DOC had been "on notice that Reeves had IQ scores in the high 60s or low 70s, subaverage intellectual functioning, and had been found to be functionally illiterate a mere two months before it handed him the election form and expected him to comprehend and utilize it without accommodation.”
Attorneys for the state have said in court that the nitrogen hypoxia method would be ready within the first four months of this year.
Attorneys for Alabama death row inmate Willie B. Smith, sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of Sharma Ruth Johnson, argued last year that his intellectual disabilities prevented him from understanding that he could choose another way to die. But the courts rejected his arguments. The state executed Smith on Oct. 21.
State of Alabama Continues to Seek Execution of Matthew Reeves
In 1996, when he was just 18 years old, Matthew Reeves went along with his brother Julius and several other people who planned to commit a robbery. Their car broke down, and when a passing driver stopped and offered to tow their car, Julius decided they would rob the man. Mr. Reeves was arrested and accused of fatally shooting the driver.
Mr. Reeves was too poor to hire a lawyer. His court-appointed lawyers had hundreds of pages of psychological and other records suggesting they needed to have Mr. Reeves evaluated for intellectual disability, but even after the trial court granted them funds, they never hired an expert to evaluate Mr. Reeves prior to trial.
As a result, the jury never heard powerful mitigating evidence about Mr. Reeves’s intellectual disability, including that he failed the first, fourth, and fifth grades and was placed in special education classes, but never advanced beyond middle school.
He was treated for mental health issues beginning when he was eight years old. At age 14, testing revealed that Matthew had “severe deficiencies in non-verbal social intelligence skills and his ability to see consequences.”
A neuropsychologist diagnosed Mr. Reeves with intellectual disability based on testing that revealed he had an IQ of 71 and could read at only a third-grade level. (The State’s expert found his IQ score was even lower, at 68.)
While the jury heard that Mr. Reeves was influenced by his brother Julius, it did not hear evidence that his low intellectual functioning made him particularly susceptible to the influence of others.
Matthew Reeves was convicted in Dallas County of capital murder during a robbery and was sentenced to death even though two jurors voted against a death sentence.
In any other state, the jury’s nonunanimous verdict would bar his execution. Alabama is the only state where a person can be sentenced to death based on a jury’s nonunanimous verdict.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Eighth Amendment bars the death penalty for children, drawing a line at age 18 that put Matthew Reeves within months of being ineligible for execution based on his young age.
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a person with intellectual disability cannot be executed, Mr. Reeves’s new lawyers presented expert testimony and other evidence showing that Mr. Reeves has intellectual disability.
But the state courts denied relief, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, following the same reasoning it used to deny relief to Willie Smith, who was executed in October despite strong evidence that he had intellectual disability.
Source: eji.org, Staff, January 26, 2022
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but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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