Ohio says man who killed 10-year-old must prove his mental disability again

COLUMBUS (AP) — The state is fighting to reinstate the death sentence of a convicted killer, arguing he must prove again that he is mentally disabled under U.S. Supreme Court standards.

Ohio says the mental state of Michael Bies has never received a proper hearing because state court findings came six years before the Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of the mentally disabled.

“You wouldn’t bother arguing over whether somebody got one foot in bounds if the rule at the time was they had to have two, but now that the rule’s been changed that one matters, you might well have different things to say about that issue,” said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

Bies, 36, killed a 10-year-old boy in Cincinnati in 1992.

Today the Supreme Court will hear Ohio’s challenge to a federal appeals court decision last year that overturned Bies’ death sentence. A ruling is expected by summer.

At least 85 death row inmates, including four from Ohio, have successfully challenged their death sentences under the 2002 decision.

Unlike Bies, those four used the standards laid out by the high court. Bies bases his argument on earlier rulings by state courts that upheld both his conviction and his death sentence while acknowledging his low IQ of 69.

“Bies’s personality disorder and mild to borderline mental retardation merit some weight in mitigation,” the Ohio Supreme Court said in its 1996 decision upholding the sentence.

Bies argues the state would be committing double jeopardy by holding a hearing on his mental disability since state courts already determined his mental state.

The U.S. Supreme Court defined mental disability as significantly sub-average intellectual functioning, significant limitations in two or more day-to-day skills and an onset of mental disability before age 18.

At the time, the ruling was one of the biggest shifts in the court’s death-penalty positions in years. It reversed its position from 1989, when the high court ruled there was no national consensus that executing the mentally disabled was unconstitutional.

The court doesn’t explain why it takes the cases it does. Cordray says a decision in the Bies case could have as much to do with clarifying the relationship between the federal and state courts when it comes to criminal appeals as it does with the issue of how mental disability is decided.

When Bies was put on trial in 1992, his disability was just one of several factors that could have prevented a death sentence, Cordray said. Now mental disability is a definitive issue by itself, so the state needs a chance to fully argue the point, he said.

Bies’ attorneys say the state court findings are enough to meet the standards laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Randall Porter, an assistant state public defender, asked “How many times are we going to make a guy that’s mentally retarded prove he’s mentally retarded?”

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ordered a new sentencing hearing for Bies, which has not been held.

Bies was convicted of killing Aaron Raines in an abandoned building. Bies and his accomplice, Darryl Gumm, decided they wanted to have sex with a child and lured the boy to the building by offering him $10 to help them remove scrap metal.

When the boy refused to submit to the men, Gumm and Bies beat him with a wooden board, metal pipe and block of concrete.

Bies eventually confessed to police. Gumm, 43, also received a death sentence. The sentence was commuted in 2007 to 48 years to life after a trial, and appeals court upheld his mental-disability claim.