How, exactly, does the defense team "discover" their client might be mentally retarded after the guilt stage? Think it was really a surprise, or are they working the system?

Retardation issue looms big in Bexar


Web Posted: 03/05/2006 12:00 AM CST

Maro Robbins and Karisa King
Express-News Staff Writers

The verdict was predictable: Guilty. What came next was unprecedented � at least in Bexar County.

Faced with a last-minute claim that Ronnie Joe Neal might be mentally retarded, the judge abruptly halted the capital murder trial, giving defense attorneys a month to more closely examine the 35-year-old lawn man who murdered an Alamo Heights teacher.

Well Big John, I suppose that a "newly discovered mental health claim" could dovetail right into his ineffective assistance claim once convicted and sentenced.

Jury sentences teacher's killer to death

Man's claim of mental retardation denied.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, April 08, 2006
SAN ANTONIO � Jurors rejected a convicted killer's claim of mental retardation and sentenced him to death for the murder of a San Antonio high school teacher.

The jury found Ronnie Joe Neal, 35, guilty last month in the November 2004 killing of Diane Tilly.

The trial resumed this week after a month's break for attorneys to examine Neal's mental capacity after his last-minute claim of retardation. On Thursday, neither the jury in Bexar County nor District Judge Sid Harle accepted Neal's claim.

Police said Neal and his 16-year-old daughter, Pearl Cruz, barged into Tilly's Alamo Heights residence with a gun. Neal raped Tilly, 58, while the teen pointed a gun at the teacher.

Cruz agreed to testify against her father in exchange for a maximum prison sentence of 30 years. Her testimony included an account of her sexually abusive relationship with her father. Cruz gave birth to her father's son in July.

Cruz is expected to plead guilty to murder.

For more details on the defendant's clearly false claim of retardations, read this link.