Arkansas inmate moved off of death row after state accepts his MR diagnosis

From the Arkansas News Bureau:

LITTLE ROCK — Condemned killer Sedrice Maurice Simpson moved off Arkansas’ death row after 11 years Sept. 17 after a federal judge commuted his death sentence.

The state had agreed with Simpson’s lawyers that he was mentally retarded and should not be executed.

In a two-page ruling filed Sept. 17, U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes accepted their joint recommendation and ordered Simpson to serve two life sentences without the possibility of parole in the 1997 shotgun slayings of grocery clerks Wendy Pennington and Lena Sue Garner in Dallas County.

“He’s no longer on death row status,” state prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler said Thursday, though she said Simpson will remain at the Varner Supermax Unit near Grady for the time being.

Simpson was convicted of two counts of capital murder in 1998. In 2007, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted him a new hearing on his claim of mental retardation and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel hired a psychologist to test his IQ.

State law prohibits execution of inmates with an IQ below 65. Simpson’s IQ is 59, Holmes wrote in his ruling.