Court lets stand decision overturning death sentences

The U. S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to review an appeals court decision that overturned the death sentences of an Oklahoma City man who killed his wife and her four children.

Without comment, the high court rejected a request from Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter to review the case.

Hunter's office argued that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred last year when it ruled Roderick L. Smith was ineligible for the death penalty because of an intellectual disability.

The U. S. Supreme Court has previously ruled it unconstitutional to execute people with intellectual disability.

The attorney general said the appeals court improperly applied a legal test in analyzing the presentation of evidence of Smith's disability.

Smith was convicted of killing his wife and her four children in 1993.

Jurors at a 2010 retrial chose two death sentences as punishment for Smith for suffocating his two stepdaughters. Jurors chose sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole as punishment for fatally stabbing his wife and two stepsons.

In their opinion, appellate judges were critical of a prosecution expert who had suggested Smith was deliberately doing poorly on his IQ tests.

They said the expert "had no prior experience with the intellectually disabled and practiced almost exclusively in the unrelated field of forensic psychology."

Smith, now 53, was an elementary school custodian.

He confessed to police he stabbed his wife, Jennifer Smith, 31, during an argument over his being laid off.

He told police he stabbed her sons, Ladarian Carter, 7, and Glen Edward Carter Jr., 9, when they tried to help her. He said he then killed the girls, Shameka Carter, 10, and Kenesha Carter, 6.

The victims' decomposing bodies were found on June 28, 1993, inside their Oklahoma City home.