Despite the Supreme Court’s Prohibition on Executing Intellectually Disabled People, Florida Authorities are Scheduled to Murder Victor Jones in 12 Days (a Black Man who Killed a White Couple)

From [HERE] Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida has signed more death warrants this year than any of his predecessors.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia estab­lished that the Eighth Amendment pro­hibits exe­cut­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Court lat­er clar­i­fied that rigid IQ cut­offs were not per­mis­si­ble and also required states to con­sid­er mean­ing­ful evi­dence of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, includ­ing sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly valid expert tes­ti­mo­ny and adap­tive func­tion­ing deficits. Despite this unequiv­o­cal con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion, two death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers — David Pittman and Victor Jones—face exe­cu­tion this month in Florida. Attorneys for both men argue they are peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties that should be exempt from exe­cu­tion and pro­tect­ed under Atkins. 

Pittman was murdered last night by government authorities.

Much like Mr. Pittman, Victor Jones, who was sen­tenced to death in 1993 for the 1990 mur­ders of his two employ­ers, has been denied relief in low­er courts regard­ing his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim and is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 30, 2025. At tri­al, the court found three aggra­vat­ing fac­tors and reject­ed every mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor pre­sent­ed by defense coun­sel. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Atkins, Mr. Jones was able to secure an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to demon­strate he met the stan­dards out­lined in that case. The State argued that because Mr. Jones’ IQ was test­ed and found to score above the hard­line thresh­old of 70, he did not qual­i­fy for relief, and the cir­cuit court agreed. After the state’s rul­ing in Hall, Mr. Jones again peti­tioned the courts for relief, but they sum­mar­i­ly denied his claims based on pri­or tes­ti­mo­ny from the Atkins hear­ing, despite its reliance on out­dat­ed medical science. 

During post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings, Mr. Jones’ sis­ter and cousin described in detail the pain and abuse they all suf­fered at the hands of Laura Long, an aunt who raised them.” Both Mr. Jones’ sis­ter and cousin described beat­ings in which Mr. Jones was made to first undress, not­ing that Ms. Long would call him ​“slow” and ​“stu­pid,” and beat him for get­ting bad grades. They also tes­ti­fied that Ms. Long’s son, who was ten years old­er than Mr. Jones, would beat them as well. This infor­ma­tion was nev­er pre­sent­ed to a jury. 

His tri­al jury also nev­er learned that as a young teenag­er, Mr. Jones was con­fined to Okeechobee School for Boys on four sep­a­rate occa­sions between 1975 and 1978. While at Okeechobee, Mr. Jones suf­fered neglect, phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse by state employ­ees, and wit­nessed bru­tal­i­ty against his peers. Mr. Jones was beat­en sev­er­al times with thick leather straps, wit­nessed the gang-rape of his peers, and to avoid sex­u­al vio­lence, he had to fight off oth­er boys, which land­ed him in soli­tary con­fine­ment. As a result of the abuse he wit­nessed and expe­ri­enced, Mr. Jones devel­oped Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), sui­ci­dal ideations, and a drug depen­den­cy. Though Mr. Jones told oth­ers, includ­ing author­i­ty fig­ures and adults about Okeechobee, no one believed him — includ­ing his pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney. Throughout his tri­al and appel­late pro­ceed­ings, the state of Florida has con­sis­tent­ly argued that evi­dence of Mr. Jones’ abuse and the men­tal health effects of that abuse was not cred­i­ble or believ­able. Without hear­ing the evi­dence of Okeechobee and his child­hood abuse, his jury returned two ver­dicts for death. Mr. Jones’ cur­rent coun­sel con­tends that had the tri­al jury heard this evi­dence it would not have sen­tenced him to death. 

Gov. DeSantis signed Mr. Jones’ exe­cu­tion war­rant less than eight months after sign­ing a bill that sets aside $20mil­lion to com­pen­sate indi­vid­u­als who were sent to Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee between 1940 and 1975 who suf­fered from men­tal, phys­i­cal, or sex­u­al abuse at the hands of state-employed offi­cials. By sign­ing this leg­is­la­tion, Gov. DeSantis acknowl­edged the wrong­do­ing of the state and trau­mat­ic effects of both Dozier and Okeechobee. An inves­ti­ga­tion by The Marshall Project found that at least 34 for­mer res­i­dents of Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys were even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to death in Florida. One of these indi­vid­u­als, Michael Bell, was exe­cut­ed in May 2025, despite fed­er­al courts nev­er hear­ing his claims. 

In January 2025, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office for­mal­ly rec­og­nized in a let­ter to Mr. Jones that he is a mem­ber of the class of boys who were abused at Okeechobee. The let­ter states in part, ​“Please know that we are sor­ry to hear about the cir­cum­stances that prompt­ed you to apply for com­pen­sa­tion,” which was even­tu­al­ly sent to his account in prison. Mr. Jones’ coun­sel argues that the let­ter from AG Moody’s office should pre­clude the state from con­tin­u­ing to pro­mote the the­o­ry that his claims of abuse are not cred­i­ble. Noting the lim­it­ed nature of the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors found at tri­al, attor­neys for Mr. Jones argue his case requires relief because a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty exists that in con­junc­tion with new evi­dence of his men­tal health issues and low IQ, the let­ter from January 2025, would lead a jury to sen­tence him to life impris­on­ment. Mr. Jones’ final war­rant-relat­ed appeals remain pend­ing in the Florida Supreme Court.