Who is Howard M Neal? Mississippi death row inmate set to be resentenced to life with the possibility of parole
LAMAR COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI: A former Mississippi death row inmate is set to be resentenced which will probably make him eligible for the possibility of parole after it was found that he has intellectual disabilities.
On Thursday, August 24, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case of 69-year-old Howard M Neal.
He wrote a letter to justices in June, urging them to alter his current sentence of life without parole due to his deteriorating health conditions.
The state attorney general's office agreed in a response on August 9 that Neal "is entitled to be resentenced to life imprisonment" with the possibility of parole.
In 1982, Neal was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 kidnapping and killing of his 13-year-old half-niece Amanda Joy Neal.
The killing happened south of the state's capital in Lawrence County and the trial was moved to Lamar County.
The state permits death penalty for people convicted of a killing committed along with another felony.
Neal also admitted to killing two other people
Investigators interviewed Neal in 2017 about the murder of two people whose bodies were discovered in a southern California desert in 1980.
According to the San Bernadino County Sheriff's Department, the inmate told them that he picked the pair up while they were hitchhiking.
He then took them to his home where fatally shot the man during an altercation over his physical approach towards the female.
Investigators said that they suspect Neal raped the woman before taking her life. The Mississippi native also failed to advance past second grade by the time he was 10 years old, court records in Mississippi show.
He was apparently then sent to schools for people with intellectual disabilities, Fox News reports.
The US Supreme Court ruled that execution of people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional
The US Supreme Court ruled that the execution of people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional in 2002 as it is cruel and unusual.
In 2008, a Mississippi judge resentenced Neal under a state law that said an inmate must be resentenced to life without parole if the death penalty is deemed unconstitutional.
The Mississippi Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of another death row inmate with intellectual disabilities in 2015.
State justices noted the law on resentencing to life without parole would apply only if the death penalty were found unconstitutional for all inmates, not just those with intellectual disabilities.
This month, the state Attorney General's office wrote that Neal's case is "materially indistinguishable" from the one that justices decided in 2015.
Also, the court documents filed in Mississippi this year do not mention that California investigators interviewed Neal about the 1980 murders.