Cleveland killer Ernest Martin got a three-month reprieve...

Cleveland killer Ernest Martin got a three-month reprieve from execution in the first of what could be many cases involving capital punishment and the mentally retarded.
Martin, 42, was scheduled to die by injection March 26 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. However, the Ohio Supreme Court postponed the execution until June 18 while mental-retardation claims are explored in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.
Martin was convicted and sentenced to death for the January 21, 1983, murder of Cleveland drugstore owner Robert Robinson. He has exhausted all of his other state and federal appeals.
The Ohio Parole Board recommended against Martin's request for clemency without responding to mental-retardation claims made by his public defenders. The clemency matter is in the hands of Gov. Bob Taft.
The US Supreme Court set the precedent in 2002 in a decision that the execution of mentally retarded inmates is unconstitutional.
The Ohio Supreme Court reacted on December 11, 2002 in a case involving Gregory Lott, another convicted killer from Cleveland, by establishing state-specific mental-retardation guidelines.
Martin's is the first case of that type to come up since.
Greg Meyers of the Ohio Public Defender's office said mental-retardation claims have been filed in a dozen other cases with many more pending. The court set a 180-day deadline for filing such claims, which would be June 9.
"Ultimately, if there's a finding of mental retardation, there will never be an execution,'' Meyers said.