New law helps to prevent Georgians with intellectual disabilities

Atlanta, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – A legislative template that was signed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to the law on Tuesday would make it easier to prevent people with intellectual disabilities if they are convicted of crime.

HB 123 Lower the legal threshold for proof that a person in the courtroom has a mental disability. Before the legislation was signed, it had to prove itself as “undoubtedly doubt”, the highest threshold. According to HB 123, it must now be “according to the predominance of evidence” a much lower evidence standard.

Georgia first banned the death penalty for people with proven intellectual disabilities in 1988, but the standard of evidence remained the most difficult. A decision by the US Court of Justice from 2002 banned the death penalty for people with proven intellectual disabilities across the country, but left it to the individual states to determine the threshold for the detection of a disability in court. Until Tuesday, Georgia remained the only state in which it had to prove itself as “undoubtedly”.

“It is an enormous, significant performance,” said Cathy Harmon-Christian, Executive Director of the Georgian group for alternatives to the death penalty. “It only shows a kind of buoyancy in which we are people and in our humanity, because every other state and the Supreme Court agree that we can blame people with intellectual disabilities for their crimes without having to kill them.”

The new law also moves the procedure to determine mental disability before a formal procedure, not during IT, which means that a person's mental performance is determined immediately.

“You will be able to have a feeling for where this is there,” said Harmon-Christian, who found out how important it is to go into a process that knows the ability of a person to rise a defense for himself.

“How can you support your lawyer to give the best testimony if you may not have the intellectual ability to do this?” she said. “And you also have to have behaviors that you may not encourage you to support your own case.”

According to Harmon-Christian, people undoubtedly slipped through the cracks into the death cell, even if they are not decided in court to have a mental disability. For example, Willie Pye, a man from Georgia who was executed in March 2024, had an IQ of 68, but was found to be competent to be on the line with the death penalty.

The draft law does not argue for the abolition of the death penalty in Georgia, but only that it becomes easier to prove the status of a defendant as someone with a intellectual disability.

“It is definitely something good for people with disabilities-spiritual disabilities,” said State Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, co-sponsor of the invoice and lawyer. “There would still be the death penalty for cold -blooded murderers, but this gives a proper procedure according to what the country of the country says here in Georgia.”

The law is not retrospectively. Georgia currently has 34 inmates in the death cell, and none of them are entitled to HB 123. In contrast to some of the legislative templates signed by the governor, which come into force on July 1, HB 123 was active when Kemp signed it on Tuesday.

Kemp only has to sign or sign invoices tomorrow. So far, he has not inserted anything since the end of the legislative period in early April.

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