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Ledell Lee has filed a motion in federal court asking the court reopen his case due to the breakdown in counsel over his decades of review, particularly the failure of counsel to bring evidence of his intellectual disability. Lee has presented new evidence showing that he has fetal alcohol syndrome disorder, significant brain damage, and intellectual disability. These facts were concealed by the line of counsel plagued with conflicts of interests, substance abuse, serious mental illness, and gross incompetence.

Ledell Lee, an innocent man who had been on Arkansas death row since 1995, was executed on April 20, 2017, despite overwhelming evidence that he was intellectually disabled, evidence that had never been considered by any court due to two decades of repeated failures by the attorneys charged with protecting his life. In 2002, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities, noting that they 鈥渋n the aggregate face a special risk of wrongful execution,鈥� Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304.

Whether Texas is violating the Constitution by using a test to determine intellectual disability in death penalty cases that is inconsistent with both Supreme Court precedent and science.

Whether, in federal habeas review of a Texas death sentence, procedural default of an ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claim may be excused when the cause of the default is initial-collateral review counsel鈥檚 own ineffectiveness.