Lawyers raise questions about defendants’ mental capacity in death-penalty cases

A Clark County judge recently found that a man accused of fatally stabbing his pregnant girlfriend should not face the death penalty after defense lawyers raised questions about his mental capacity.

District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez concluded earlier this month that psychological analysis revealed that 33-year-old Eric Covington “demonstrates significant subaverage general intellectual functioning,” which started before he was 18, and that he had “significant deficits in adaptive behavior.”

That met the three concepts the Nevada Supreme Court has determined clarify the definition of intellectual disability. In addition to determining intellectual and adaptive functioning, a judge must decide whether the mental deficiencies began at an early age.

Covington’s case is the latest example of a judge granting a seldom-used defense in line with requirements set by the U.S. and Nevada supreme courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court has found that executing inmates with intellectual disabilities violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2014, the high court wrote: “to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being.”

In Covington’s case, prosecutors allege that he stabbed his 24-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Sagitarius Gomez, more than 100 times because he did not want her to be with another man. Prosecutors have said they plan to appeal Gonzalez’s ruling.

Although another doctor had previously found that Covington has an IQ of 77, a psychologist who analyzed him in October found that he has an IQ of 62.

A psychologist for the prosecution examined him in November and found his IQ at 76.

The judge’s decision also meant that the trial, which had been delayed in October and was scheduled to resume last week, was canceled.

Around the same time Gonzalez made her ruling, attorneys in two other capital cases presented similar arguments, contending that defendants have intellectual disabilities that should automatically disqualify them from execution should they be convicted.

Next month, District Judge Doug Smith is expected to consider findings from Sharon Jones-Forrester, a Las Vegas clinical neuropsychologist who determined that suspected serial killer Nathan Burkett has an IQ of 59.

“Burkett is functioning at an extraordinary low level of intelligence,” his attorneys, Christopher Oram and Betsy Allen, wrote in court papers.

Burkett attended segregated schools in the Deep South and received mostly D’s and F’s before dropping out as a high school sophomore in 1962, his lawyer wrote.

His IQ was tested at 55 while he was serving time in a Mississippi prison on a manslaughter conviction in the death of his mother.

Gonzalez is also scheduled to hear arguments next month regarding the mental capacity of Gustavo Ramos, facing the death penalty for two counts each of murder, armed robbery and sexual assault in the 1998 killing of 75-year-old Wallace Siegel and 86-year-old Helen Sabraw, who were found on back-to-back days at their assisted-living home.

His attorneys, Ivette Maningo and Abel Yanez , filed court papers last week, saying a California psychologist determined Ramos-Martinez has an IQ between 67 and 77.

Authorities linked Ramos-Martinez to the slayings in 2010 after he gave a DNA sample while serving time in federal prison on an illegal immigration charge.

Raised in “extreme poverty,” Ramos-Martinez struggled in school while in Mexico and the United States, according to the documents from his lawyers.

“His relatives thought he was ‘dumb’ because he couldn’t learn, and his siblings often had to do his homework for him,” the lawyers wrote. He had trouble following simple instructions as a child, and as an adult “he was unable to separate lemons from limes.”

He had difficulty maintaining employment for more than a few months, never lived independently and does not know how to maintain a banking account.

Ramos-Martinez was first deported in 1998 after pleading guilty to trying to stab his girlfriend in a drunken fight a month after the killings. His home at the time was an apartment complex less than a quarter-mile from the victims’ assisted living home.

Prosecutors have yet to file opposition in the cases of Burkett or Ramos-Martinez. At times, both sides agree that a defendant may not be mentally fit for the death penalty.

Late last month, 25-year-old Jerry Howard was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after prosecutors agreed to withdraw the death penalty.

Howard pleaded guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon for a vicious attack on 54-year-old Kathy Shines while she was collecting cans in the 3300 block of South Nellis Boulevard in January 2015.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said he considered “a substantial likelihood” that, because of medical reports on Howard’s mental capacity, a jury would not impose capital punishment.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.