Man's possible disability key issue in Kansas capital case
Source: Associated Press
John Hanna, Associated Press Updated 4:11 pm, Friday, October 27, 2017
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A south-central Kansas man's attorneys asked the state Supreme Court on Friday to spare him from execution for the murder of a college dance team member because of questions about whether he is developmentally disabled.
The court heard arguments in an appeal from Justin Eugene Thurber, who was sentenced to die for the January 2007 rape and strangulation of Jodi Sanderholm, a 19-year-old Cowley College student. The death sentence came after the trial judge rejected a defense request for a hearing on whether Thurber is developmentally disabled.
The trial judge concluded that Thurber's attorneys at the time had failed to present enough evidence to warrant such a hearing under a section of the state's death penalty law barring the execution of defendants with "significantly subaverage" functioning." The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that executing someone with even a mild intellectual disability violates the U.S. Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
"If he's in a protected class, he cannot be executed," Reid Nelson, a state capital appeals defender, told the justices, suggesting that the court must impose a sentence of life in prison without parole instead.
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