Supreme Court Denies Appeal from Texas Death Row Inmate Even Though the Prosecutors on His Case Filed a Motion in Support

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File

The Supreme Court of the United States denied an appeal from a death row inmate in Texas on Monday, despite motions in support filed by both his defense attorneys and the prosecutors who handled his case.

Victor Saldaño was convicted and sentenced to death in Collin County, Texas in 1996 for a robbery and murder. According to The Texas Tribune, “Saldaño and an accomplice forced [the victim] into their car at gunpoint in Plano and drove him to a secluded area, where they robbed him and shot him several times.”

In 2024, Saldaño petitioned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to be able to present evidence that he was intellectually disabled and therefore it would be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment to execute him, pursuant to a 2002 Supreme Court case, Atkins v. Virginia.

The evidence he wanted to use included “three IQ tests — including one from the state — that found Saldaño within the range for intellectual disability, as well as interviews with 13 people who knew him before and during his incarceration,” reported the Tribune.

The TCCA denied Saldaño’s petition and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. In a very unusual move, the Collin County prosecutors filed a brief supporting Saldaño’s petition and agreeing with his attorneys’ argument that he had “made a prima facie showing that he is intellectually disabled under Atkins…both Saldaño’s experts and the State’s expert agree that he meets the criteria for [intellectual disability] under Atkins.”

But the Supreme Court disagreed, in a 6-3 decision. Saldaño’s petition for a writ of certiorari was denied without a written opinion, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a 6-page dissent.

“Here, every expert to have evaluated petitioner Victor Saldaño has concluded that he is intellectually disabled,” wrote Sotomayor. “As a result, both Saldaño and the State of Texas asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to remand for a trial court to review the relevant evidence and decide whether Saldaño can be executed consistent with the Eighth Amendment. Yet the TCCA refused that modest step.”

Sotomayor noted that the evidence gathered from Saldaño’s childhood included having to repeat sixth grade, having “difficulty bathing, feeding, and clothing himself,” an incident in which he “‘spent two days without food, a bathroom, or anything else’ inexplicably waiting outside his uncle’s house even though other family members lived nearby,” and that he “was also twice struck by cars because he could not grasp his family’s explanations of how to avoid cars in the street.”

“Every expert in the case agrees that Saldaño’s IQ scores satisfy the criteria for intellectual disability, that his severe conceptual, social, and practical deficits show serious impairment of adaptive functioning, and that all these deficits have been present since his childhood,” Sotomayor argued, concluding:

The Court’s refusal to allow that merits determination to proceed not only does a profound disservice to Saldaño, who
now might be executed without any court ever determining whether he is, in fact, intellectually disabled. It also severely undermines the State’s interest in ensuring the legitimacy of its criminal system.

Here, the State admirably sought to fulfill its responsibilities by ensuring that, if it is going to take Saldaño’s life, that grave act will comport with the Constitution’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. The TCCA did not satisfy its reciprocal obligations. Because the Court’s refusal to intervene both creates a significant risk that Saldaño’s fundamental rights will be violated in contravention of the Eighth Amendment and disserves the State’s important interests in preventing that result, I respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.

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