Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina might want to avoid checking her voice messages for the foreseeable future.
The Fraternal Order of Police, District Attorney's Office and the family of fallen Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Boyle yesterday unleashed a torrent of fury in Sarmina's direction as they responded to the judge's recent decision to vacate a death sentence for Boyle's killer, Edward Bracey.
In a one-page ruling Friday, Sarmina sided with Bracey's attorneys, who argued that he was mentally retarded -- and thus shouldn't be executed, because of a constitutional restriction.
"This [man] is a killer," FOP Lodge 5 president John McNesby said. "If he shot a judge instead of a cop, he'd already be dead."
Boyle's father, Pat Boyle, said it was insulting to compare Bracey to mentally handicapped people: "They don't murder people," he said.
"Using this defense . . . it's cheap, it's cowardly and it's demeaning," Boyle said. "This is a miscarriage of justice. . . . It mocks all that is right and fair."
Bracey, then 27, was driving a stolen Buick early Feb. 4, 1991, on a mission with two friends to rob neighborhood drug dealers. Bracey, armed with a 9 mm automatic handgun, told his friends, "No cop's going to thump on me."
So when Boyle's police car began trailing them, Bracey sped off with Boyle in pursuit -- stopping only when he wrecked in North Philadelphia. Before Boyle could act, Bracey leapt onto the cruiser's hood, leveled his gun at Boyle and demanded that the officer toss his gun out the window.
Boyle tried to drive away, but Bracey blasted his gun at his cruiser several times. Boyle, who had graduated from the academy seven months earlier, took a fatal shot to the head. Bracey was convicted of murder in 1992.
First Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann said yesterday that the D.A.'s office is considering appealing Sarmina's decision once they've investigated further. Bracey's lawyers previously failed in attempts to show he was mentally retarded.
Though Bracey quit school in 10th grade, experts testified in 1998 that he was not mentally retarded, according to the D.A.'s office. One said he tested five points higher than the range considered mentally retarded on an IQ test (below 70, average is 100). Another said he was "borderline."
A judge in 1998 dismissed Bracey's appeal as meritless. In 2002, he appealed again, requesting a jury determination of his mental abilities. The judge dismissed his second appeal in 2007. Bracey appealed again in 2009. A four-day hearing was held in April -- the first time Bracey presented evidence his IQ was below 70, McCann said.
Pat Boyle said he and his family attended the hearings, but were not asked to make victim-impact statements. "The victim and the victim's family are forgotten about in this process," he said.
Sarmina's decision stated that with an IQ of 74, Bracey's "intellectual functioning is 'limited' or 'subaverage,' " and he is "mentally retarded as defined by our Supreme Court."
Bracey, McCann pointed out yesterday, fought his sentence longer than Boyle lived. The Federal Public Defender's Office represented Bracey, but no one there could be reached for comment.
Marc Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, said the state Supreme Court directed Sarmina to hold a hearing on Bracey's mental-impairment claim, during which Bracey showed he had a significant disability that began before he was 18 and affected him daily, impacting, for example, his ability to do basic tasks like sweeping floors.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 made it illegal to execute anyone deemed mentally retarded, as it would violate Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, Bookman said.
Under the ruling, Bracey will still spend life in prison.
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McClatchy-Tribune News Service
