An Arkansas man who has spent the past 25 years on death row for the 1996 killing of a prison guard cannot be executed by the state after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal of a federal court ruling setting aside his death sentence.
Alvin Bernall Jackson, 51, was serving a life sentence for the July 1989 shooting death of 47-year-old Charles Colclasure, a Little Rock businessman, when he stabbed prison guard Scott Grimes, 41, to death in 1996 when Grimes stepped in to intervene in a fight.
According to news reports at the time, Grimes was attempting to break up a fight between Jackson and another inmate at the Tucker Maximum Security Unit when he was stabbed twice in the chest with a "shank," a homemade knife fashioned out of a sharpened piece of metal. He died less than an hour later in the prison infirmary.
Jackson was later sentenced to death for the killing of Grimes. The Grimes Unit in Newport was named for the Pine Bluff native.
Jackson's attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig of Little Rock, was appointed to represent Jackson in 1998 under Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 37.5, which mandates that defendants in death penalty cases be provided with a court-appointed attorney for post-conviction relief proceedings if the defendant is indigent.
"I was appointed after his direct appeal was decided," Rosenzweig said. "In fact, he was the first Rule 37.5 defendant, the rule that for the first time mandated people have appointed lawyers post-conviction in Arkansas in death cases."
Rosenzweig said after Jackson's appeals were turned down by the Arkansas Court of Appeals and the Arkansas Supreme Court, he filed a writ of habeas corpus to the federal district court in Little Rock where the case was heard by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright. He said Wright ruled against Jackson three times and was overturned each time by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"The fourth time through she correctly ruled for us and the state appealed and lost in the 8th Circuit and again this week in the U.S. Supreme Court," he said.
Wright filed a stay of execution and commutation of Jackson's sentence to life without parole on March 23, 2020. Her ruling was appealed by the state the following month. On August 13, 2021, the 8th Circuit affirmed Wright's ruling.
On Jan. 18, the state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, filing a writ of certiorari with the high court asking it to review the lower court's ruling. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the state's petition, which affirmed the ruling of the lower courts setting aside Jackson's death sentence and which Rosenzweig said should be the end of the case.
"It should be," he said. "Technically, the attorney general could ask them to reconsider but other than that, that's the end of the case."
Rosenzweig said the effect of the ruling is to declare Jackson ineligible to be executed due to intellectual impairment or mental retardation, meaning that he is incapable of understanding the reasoning behind his execution.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to sentence people with intellectual disabilities to death. The high court cited the higher probability of inaccurate factual determinations of guilt and individual culpability due to the increased potential that defendants with intellectual disability would "unwittingly confess to crimes they did not commit."
The decision also suggested that "[m]entally retarded defendants may be less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel and are typically poor witnesses, and their demeanor may create an unwarranted impression of lack of remorse for their crimes."
Writing for the majority in that 2002 ruling, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "Mentally retarded persons frequently know the difference between right and wrong and are competent to stand trial, but, by definition, they have diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand others' reactions. Their deficiencies do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal culpability."
Rosenzweig said Jackson was tested numerous times for his intellectual capacity and although he didn't reveal the results of those tests, "there was clear evidence of mental disability/mental retardation."
"Our expert said he was mentally retarded," he said. "The state's expert said it's really hard to say whether he is or not, that it's a very close question. This is the state's guy, not our guy, and he also said on cross examination that there's no question he was born with a bad brain, the question was whether you could call it mental retardation or something else."
Rosenzweig said the Supreme Court's denial of the state's appeal didn't take on any of the specifics of Jackson's case but only said the court had denied the state's petition for the court to review the 8th Circuit decision.
"So the 8th Circuit's ruling in our favor stands," he said. "All you can say on the denial of certiorari is that the Supreme Court said this was not an issue which they needed to weigh in on, that the decision of the 8th Circuit was correct."
Rosenzweig said the ruling was not only welcome but, after nearly 25 years, was a long time coming.
"I was 45 when I was appointed," he said. "I'll be 70 in September."