Jim Patton (M.Ed. ‘74, Ed.D. ‘81 Spec Ed) never imagined that his Curry degree would take him to death row. Over the past eight years, however, the slim, silver-haired special education professor has found himself there repeatedly. Not as an inmate, of course. He is there to interview inmates convicted of capital crimes—inmates who might be spared the death penalty if they are determined to be intellectually disabled.
Patton, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is a sought-after expert witness regarding intellectual capacity—an expertise in high demand by the justice system since the 2002 Supreme Court decision, Atkins v. Virginia. The Court ruled that executing death row inmates with "mental retardation" was cruel and unusual punishment.
“Suddenly, there was a great interest in this topic,” Patton says. “It’s really important. A lot of folks might be due a different sentencing option.”
Within the year, Patton began receiving requests both to train defense lawyers on the characteristics of mild intellectual disabilities and to provide expert testimony in specific cases.
“Suddenly, there was a great interest in this topic. A lot of folks might be due a different sentencing option.”
Patton’s training is not in the area of forensic psychology, as some judges might expect. His expertise comes from his years of both scholarship in special education and his experience working with children and adults with mild disabilities.
He began his career as a special education teacher at Burnley Moran Elementary School in Charlottesville, after earning his master’s degree from the Curry School. A few years later he returned to Curry for his doctoral work, with Jim Payne as his advisor. During those years he coordinated and taught at “Night College,” weekly life skills classes for adults with mild intellectual disabilities held in Ruffner Hall. By the time he finished the program, he had already coauthored a book, Exceptional Individual in Focus, which is currently in its seventh edition.
After a decade at the University of Hawaii, Patton moved to Austin. He has been a prolific writer on the topic of intellectual disabilities. He has also co-authored the standardized assessment instruments, “Scholastic Abilities for Adults” and the “Transition Planning Inventory,” as well as the forthcoming “Comprehensive Adaptive Behavior System.”
While he is not a psychologist and cannot conduct IQ tests, Patton specializes in adaptive skills assessments for the cases he accepts. He must consider whether a client exhibits significant limitations in the functions of daily living, which include communication, self-care, home living, social skills, use of community resources, self-direction, health and safety, functional academics, leisure, and work.
He begins each assessment with a client interview, and he admits that his first visit to death row was daunting. “It’s mostly uneventful,” he says. “Once in a while someone scares you. But if they’ve been on death row, they are just mentally beaten down by the existence. Some of them have spent ten years or more going through appeals processes.” In Texas, he explains, death row inmates are allowed no television, only radio, and they are allowed out of the cell for only an hour a day. “It’s a tough place,” he says.
Patton’s investigations take him not only to jail and prisons, but to the homes and offices of parents, siblings, former teachers, or work supervisors, wherever they may be currently located. In order for an Atkins claim to be supported, the intellectual disability must have been exhibited during the developmental years, or before the person turned 18. The older the inmate, the harder the task, Patton has found. Decades-old school records are hard to come by, so he often has to rely on the memories of those who knew the client when he or she was growing up.
In all cases Patton has worked, he says he must maintain objectivity. Even though he is often hired by defense teams, he does not always find significant deficits in adaptive functioning.
In addition to serving as an expert witness, Patton now spends more hours teaching lawyers, judges, and investigators than he does teaching educators. He has also begun taking cases with lower stakes, such as non-capital crimes or cases involving parole decisions.
“It’s interesting to me how someone whose knowledge and skill sets developed him to be a special education teacher could give him status as an expert in the courts,” Patton says., “My experiences at Curry have served me very well, but I would have never predicted that I would someday be working on death penalty cases.”
By Lynn Bell
