A Utah man who has been on death row for nearly 30 years is back in state court fighting his capital murder conviction.
Attorneys for Michael Anthony Archuleta, now 55, argued before the Utah Supreme Court on Wednesday that their client is intellectually disabled, and therefore, legally cannot be executed.
The claim was initially made in a federal court appeal for Archuleta, who has been on Utah’s death row since his December 1989 conviction of the brutal murder of 28-year-old Southern Utah State College student Gordon Ray Church.
But because the intellectual disability claim had not been brought before the state courts before, that portion of the federal appeal was sent to the state’s highest court for consideration.