Robert Keith Woodall v. Kentucky

The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321 (2002). Persons facing the death penalty, the most severe sentence our society may impose, “must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution.” Hall v. Florida, 572 U.S. 701, 724 (2014). In this case, the trial court presiding over Robert Woodall’s intellectual disability hearing entered into evidence and considered Mr. Woodall’s records from a state correctional medical facility, including a pre-trial report written by Richard Johnson, a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, who evaluated Mr. Woodall and concluded he is not intellectually disabled – applying a pre-Atkins and pre-Hall standard that failed to properly consider adaptive functioning skills as required by Hall. The trial court considered the psychologist’s written report and testimony without requiring the psychologist to testify and be subject to cross examination at the evidentiary hearing. The question presented is, does Kentucky’s postconviction procedure for determining whether Robert Woodall is intellectually disabled violate Woodall’s Fourteenth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and his Eighth Amendment right to heightened standards of reliability in the determination that death is an appropriate punishment?