Post by CCADP on Apr 16, 2006 14:56:55 GMT -5
Edmondson calls on justices to send three back to death row.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2006 The Daily Oklahoman
Byline: Michael McNutt
Apr. 8--Attorney General Drew Edmondson is requesting the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a decision of the state's highest criminal court that overturned three death sentences.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in December that the three cases involve inmates who are mentally retarded. The judges voted 4-1 to overturn their death sentences and ordered them to serve life without parole in prison.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the execution of someone mentally retarded was unconstitutional. The court left it to each state to develop the proper method to enforce the constitutional restriction.
A bill Edmondson's office requested to establish procedures for determining mental retardation in death penalty cases, Senate Bill 1807, is pending in the Legislature, he said.
"We need to set the procedures in statute so the state has a level playing field," Edmondson said.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals should be required to allow the state to respond to these types of appeals before taking action on a case, he said.
The cases in Edmondson's request involve Darrin Lynn Pickens, Maximo Lee Salazar and Robert Wayne Lambert. They were sentenced to death for separate slayings.
According to Edmondson:
Pickens killed two convenience store clerks and tried to kill another during three separate robberies in Sapulpa and Tulsa.
Salazar killed a 9-year-old girl by stabbing her twice in the throat while robbing her parents' home in Cache.
Lambert robbed, kidnapped and killed a man and a woman in Creek County by locking them in the truck of a car and setting it on fire.
The U.S. Supreme Court should overturn the Court of Criminal Appeals' decisions and "put these killers back on death row where they belong," Edmondson said.
Copyright (c) 2006, The Daily Oklahoman
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.