A Win for Our Client with Intellectual Disability

Dear Supporters:

After years of vigorous advocacy by Texas Defender Service and a pro bono team from O’Melveny & Myers LLP, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that our client Steven Long is constitutionally exempt from the death penalty because of his intellectual disability. 

Steven Long’s is one of the 39 lives we have saved since 2018 and the second life we have saved this summer. Last week, our client Ronald Burgos Aviles received a life sentence after 12 jurors in Laredo, Texas decided that the “mitigating factors” in his case—researched and presented by Texas Defender Service’s team—warranted a sentence of life rather than death.

In 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of people with intellectual disability. But experts universally agree that people with intellectual disability remain on America’s death rows despite the constitutional ban. 

Steven has a severe intellectual disability. Although Steven’s IQ has been tested eight separate times, the highest IQ score he has ever received is a 64, placing him in the bottom 0.8% of all people and within the range of severe intellectual impairment. As a child, Steven failed most of his classes, was socially promoted to the next grade four separate times, and had to repeat first, fourth, fifth, and seventh grades. Although he was very old for his grade, Steven scored in the lowest percentile on state academic testing. Steven could not meet any academic requirements beyond the fourth grade.

Steven was exposed prenatally to alcohol and has both Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Static Encephalopathy, or “permanent brain damage.” Steven’s mother, who had grown up in an orphanage and had herself received an IQ score of 59, did not seek any prenatal care until she was seven months pregnant with Steven. 

As an adult, Steven was not able to live independently and depended on his mother his entire life.

Steven’s disability is irrefutable, but it took years of hard-fought work to obtain this relief for him. This is, unfortunately, common. Steven is our sixth client with intellectual disability who has been relieved of his death sentence because of our advocacy since 2018.  Our clients should not have faced the death penalty in the first place. But their disabilities made it difficult for them to protect themselves against the death penalty, especially in Texas, which prioritizes excessive punishment over fairness and truth.

We will continue the fight to ensure that our Constitution’s promises are enforced in Texas, Ground Zero for mass incarceration on the planet. 

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With gratitude,