Killer’s Retardation Claim Is Denied

A Riverside County judge on Monday upheld the death sentence of Horace Edwards Kelly in the first case tried under a recent California Supreme Court ruling that allows mentally retarded inmates to challenge their execution sentence.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan ruled that Kelly’s attorneys failed to prove that Kelly was retarded when he killed three people in 1984, including an 11-year-old boy.

The state’s high court ruled in February 2005 that inmates could receive a hearing to challenge their death penalties if an expert said they were retarded. Kelly’s attorneys had argued that their client displayed significant mental deterioration and suffered from schizophrenia.

Morgan said he doubted the credibility of the defense witnesses and asked why lawyers did not cite a deteriorating mental status in Kelly’s previous trials.

“These things don’t happen in real life,” Morgan said. “I call into question the vast majority of the witnesses that the petitioner called.”

Kelly, who has twice come within a week of execution but was awarded stays, will have the case heard in the state’s high court, Riverside County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Ruddy said.

Defense witness Dr. Sophia Vinogradov, a clinical, academic and research psychiatrist in San Francisco, wrote that Kelly “frequently speaks in an incoherent word salad that makes his speech practically unintelligible.” Kelly was also sexually and physically abused by his father as a child, defense attorneys said.

Kelly faces three death sentences, including one for killing Danny Osentowski, 11, on Thanksgiving Day in 1984.

Danny and his 13-year-old cousin Shannon Prock were walking to a convenience store in the Riverside County town of Pedley, when Kelly, a security guard at a nearby construction site, grabbed the girl and held a handgun to her neck as he dragged her to his van, court records show.

Danny kicked Kelly in the shins, allowing his cousin to escape. Kelly then fatally shot Danny in the chest and head.

After Kelly confessed to the slaying, detectives determined that the bullets from his gun matched bullets from two San Bernardino County killings the week before.

Sonia Reed and Ursula Houser were both found shot in the back and nude from the waist down.

Kelly stole two of Houser’s rings, giving one to his wife and selling the other, prosecutors said.

Ruddy argued that Kelly successfully held a job and had a driver’s license, proving that he was not mentally retarded.

“This is the culmination of 20 years of Mr. Kelly not taking accountability for what he did,” Ruddy said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Kelly is at San Quentin State Prison and was not present at Monday’s ruling.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing a mentally retarded person was unconstitutional because it was cruel and unusual punishment.

Justices left it to each state to arrive at a definition of retardation.

Last year, the California Supreme Court ruled that a judge must decide whether it was more likely than not that a defendant had “significantly subaverage general intellectual functionings” and that the disability began before age 18.