Judge rules death row inmate is not intellectually disabled

“The court has labored to give full and fair consideration to the issues raised in the pleadings. This task has been somewhat complicated by the district attorney’s position in this matter, which has prevented these issues from receiving full testing within the adversarial system.”

— SENIOR JuDgE WalTER KuRTz

A Nashville judge dismissed a death row inmate’s plea that he be found intellectually disabled under the definitions of a new state law and his death sentence be commuted to life in prison.

Both defense attorneys and prosecutors, in unusual unity, agreed on the motion. But that didn’t sway Senior Judge Walter Kurtz.

“A judge routinely and conciliatorily wants to resolve cases when the parties agree to a resolution, but cannot do so when the law forbids the agreed resolution,” Kurtz wrote in an opinion filed Tuesday.

Byron Black, 65, was convicted in Davidson County of murdering his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakesha, 6, at their home in April 1988.

Prosecutors at the time said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three. At the time of the killings, Black was on work release while serving time for shooting and wounding Clay’s estranged husband.

The state’s position largely rests on the medical testimony of two doctors, one who changed her opinion about Black’s mental faculties.

Black was evaluated in 2004 under a now-outdated framework deemed unconstitutional and overturned by legislation passed last year to remedy the issue in Tennessee.

At the time, expert witness Dr. Susan Vaught said he did not meet the criteria to be considered intellectually disabled under the then-standard.

Vaught now says, under the new 2021 intellectual disability diagnosis law, Black meets the criteria.

Federal public defenders Kelley Henry, Amy Harwell and Richard Tennent represent Black in his quest to commute his death sentence.

“Byron Black is unquestionably intellectually disabled. The state’s own expert agrees,” Henry wrote in a statement shared by email Tuesday afternoon.

Kurtz’s ruling was an “extraordinary step” in response to the agreed stipulations of both the federal public defenders and the Nashville district attorney, Henry said.

District Attorney Glenn Funk’s brief in response to the defense’s motion said the 2021 law is so different from the one in effect in 2004 that, in his opinion, the previous finding is irrelevant to the current question.

Kurtz disagreed. He said the new state law does not require the previous evaluation to have been made under the new standards, just that it was a decision made on the merits of an evaluation in the past.

“The court has labored to give full and fair consideration to the issues raised in the pleadings. This task has been somewhat complicated by the district attorney’s position in this matter, which has prevented these issues from receiving full testing within the adversarial system,” he wrote.

Black’s intellectual disability claim is part of his effort to be deemed not competent to be executed.

“Today’s order says that even though the law has changed, the courthouse doors are closed to Byron Black,” Henry wrote Tuesday. “We will appeal this decision, which, in our view, misinterprets Tennessee and federal law.

“The state of Tennessee must not be permitted to execute Byron Black.”

Black was scheduled to be executed in 2020, but pandemic-related precautions twice delayed the date, the second time indefinitely.

His execution date was recently reset to Aug. 18.