Filing deadline set for inmate
Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006
TEXARKANA — A federal judge has given a death-row inmate a July 31 deadline for court filings related to his claim that he is mentally retarded and should not be executed.
U. S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes set the deadline in the case of Joe Louis Dansby, 52, who has exhausted his state appeals.
Dansby is sentenced to die for the May 16, 1992, killings of Jeff Lewis, 23, and Malissa Clark, 21, both of Prescott. The two were found shot to death near a logging road in Nevada County. Dansby was convicted in Miller County of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1997. He and his lawyers say his IQ falls below 70, considered the cutoff for mental retardation. In September the judge granted Dansby a mental evaluation.
The last Arkansas inmate executed, Eric Nance, unsuccessfully argued that he was mentally retarded and could not legally be put to death under a 2002 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that bars states from executing a mentally retarded person.
Nance died by lethal injection Nov. 28 after his appeals failed, but his life was extended by about 90 minutes to give the U. S. Supreme Court time for a final review of claims in the case.
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