USA - California. Calvin Coleman Jr. has been spared the death penalty after 27 years on death row.

Calvin Coleman Jr.  has been spared the death penalty after 27 years on death row. Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed in court that Coleman is legally mentally retarded and therefore exempt from capital punishment. A jury sentenced Coleman, now 50, to death in 1981.  Attorneys for Coleman petitioned for a review of his sentence after a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared state laws allowing the mentally retarded to be executed amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. Coleman was convicted of attacking three women at their home in May 1980, stabbing 2 of them, raping one and fatally shooting another. (source: The Press Democrat, Associated Press)