Teen with IQ of 47 was convicted of child sex abuse

By Emily Ramshaw in the Dallas Morning News, AP/Fox News:

Attorneys and advocates are challenging the fairness of a hundred-year prison sentence for an 18-year-old with profound mental disabilities who pleaded guilty to a single incident of child sex abuse.

They say the case of first-time offender Aaron Hart, who has an IQ of 47, raises grave questions about the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities by the Texas criminal justice system. Repeat child molesters and rapists routinely receive lesser sentences than Hart’s.

… at issue is Hart’s trial. His defense attorney hardly questioned his client’s competency to stand trial, his appellate lawyer said. And though both the judge and jurors say they would have preferred not to send Hart to prison, state care facilities and group homes for disabled offenders were never presented as options.

… “Aaron is 18, never committed a felony, had no violent record. He couldn’t understand the seriousness of what he did,” said his father, Robert Hart. “I never dreamed they would think about sending him to prison. When they said 100 years – it was terror, pure terror to me.”

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 12:57 pm and is filed under criminal justice, intellectual/developmental disabilities, personal stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.