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Georgia committee advances bill changing how intellectual disability is proved in death-penalty cases
Summary
The House Judiciary Committee advanced House Bill 123 (LC 48 13 78) after hours of testimony from defense attorneys, disability advocates and prosecutors. The bill would change the standard of proof for intellectual disability and allow an optional pretrial hearing to separate that question from the guilt phase of capital trials.
The House Judiciary Committee on (date not specified) advanced House Bill 123 (LC 48 13 78), which would change how Georgia determines whether a defendant has an intellectual disability in capital cases.
Proponents said the bill, authored and presented in committee by Chairman Bill Werkheiser, would lower the standard of proof to a preponderance of the evidence and permit parties to request a pretrial hearing to decide intellectual disability before the guilt phase of a capital trial. "Georgia is the only state in our nation that is executing those with intellectual disabilities," Werkheiser said during his presentation. He described the bill as a way to avoid sending people with intellectual disability to execution.
The bill’s supporters — including the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities and disability advocates with the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta — said the changes are narrow but important. Michael Admorand of the Southern Center for Human Rights told the committee that the bill’s effect would be limited to a small number of cases: "It's very important, but it's also very, very limited," he said, noting Department of Corrections numbers that many thousands of convictions occur each decade but only a handful of death cases involve intellectual-disability claims.
Witnesses and committee members debated two linked changes: lowering the evidentiary standard and changing procedure to allow an optional pretrial hearing. Defense-oriented witnesses and longtime criminal-defense lawyers said separating the intellectual-disability question from the guilt phase reduces the risk that jurors will conflate evidence about the crime with the clinical question of disability. Russell Gabriel, a criminal-defense lawyer who said he represented a defendant in which jurors previously found a person intellectually disabled, argued the current practice forces jurors to consider two distinct issues at the same time and can obscure the disability evidence amid emotional trial testimony.
Prosecutors expressed reservations about the bill’s procedural changes. Randy McGinley, district attorney in the Alcovy Circuit, said prosecutors are broadly willing to accept a change in the standard of proof but worry the pretrial hearing and the new interlocutory appeals it authorizes could substantially extend already long capital-case timelines. McGinley cited local experience and appeals practice and said repeated intermediate appeals could add many months or years before trial.
Committee members pressed both sides on operational details: whether a pretrial determination would bar later re-raising of the issue, how often the state would consent to pretrial hearings, and how the change would affect the unified appeals process for death cases. Witnesses noted the bill as written leaves many procedural choices to judges and to the parties; lines in the draft make a pretrial hearing discretionary unless the state agrees, and the bill expressly limits retroactivity to cases that go to trial after 07/01/2025.
After more than two hours of testimony and questions, the committee voted to pass the bill out of committee. The committee record shows a motion to pass LC 48 13 78 and a voice vote in favor; no roll-call tally was recorded in the transcript.
Why it matters: Supporters say the measure will reduce the risk that people with clinically diagnosed intellectual disability face execution by treating disability as a distinct, fact-based question separate from guilt. Prosecutors warned the procedural changes could substantially slow capital litigation and create new interlocutory review points; they said they do not oppose lowering the standard of proof but seek changes to the pretrial-hearing language.
What’s next: The bill passed the committee and will proceed to the next stage of legislative consideration. Committee members and stakeholders said they expect vendors, prosecutors and judges to continue work refining the pretrial-hearing language and the appeals mechanics.
