Attorneys for Pervis Payne, a Shelby County man who has been on death row for 33 years, have filed a petition to present his intellectual disability claim in court following a new law that could allow him to use the claim to stop his execution.

The bill, which passed the state House and the Senate April 26, was signed by Gov. Bill Lee. It allows Payne and other death row inmates with intellectual disabilities to petition the court to stop their executions. 

Lee granted Payne a temporary reprieve last year due to COVID-19, but that reprieve expired April 9. It is now up to the Tennessee Supreme Court to decide if a new execution date will be set. 

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Payne, 54, has been on death row since his 1988 conviction in the 1987 Millington stabbing deaths of Charisse Christopher, 28, and her 2-year-old daughter, Lacie. Christopher’s 3-year-old son Nicholas, who was stabbed multiple times, survived the attack.

Payne has for 33 years declared he is innocent. A Shelby County judge allowed DNA evidence in the case to be tested last year and results showed DNA from an unknown man on a knife, but it was too degraded to identify the person in the FBI’s database.

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“Pervis Payne is indisputably intellectually disabled. Mr. Payne meets all three Atkins requirements, as well as those of the Tennessee statute. He has significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, significant adaptive deficits in each domain and his disability manifested prior to age 18,” according to the petition filed Wednesday, May 12, in Shelby County Criminal Court.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing a person with an intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Tennessee Supreme Court later ruled there was no procedure for death row inmates to reopen their cases for intellectual disability claims and told legislators to address the matter, which they did last month by passing new legislation on the issue.

In a statement on Payne’s petition to the court, state leaders including state Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who co-sponsored the law to modernize the state’s intellectual disability law, called on Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich to stipulate Payne has an intellectual disability.

“The motto on the Shelby County District Attorney’s website is ‘Do the right thing every day for the right reason.’ Well, now is the time to do the right thing. D.A. Weirich should join with the Memphis community – her constituents – and agree that Pervis Payne is a person with intellectual disability. As such, his execution would be unconstitutional,” Hardaway said in a statement.

Other community leaders and clergy members agreed with Hardaway and in statements urged Weirich to not fight the petition.

“Mr. Payne has been sitting on death row, wrongfully, for 33 years. Never once did the State challenge the fact that he is a person with intellectual disability. D.A. Weirich should not start now. Litigating this undisputed fact would be a stunning waste of time and taxpayer money,” said Bishop David Allen Hall Sr., pastor of the Temple Church Of God In Christ in Memphis.

The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office has said Payne is guilty of the crime and that the evidence in the case overwhelmingly points to him. The office opposed testing DNA and has contended that Payne is not intellectually disabled. 

Payne’s attorneys said in the statement Wednesday that his educational records, experts and administered tests confirm he is in the intellectually disabled range with an IQ of 72 and a functional score of 68.4.

In Tennessee, an IQ of 70 or below is the state’s definition of an “intellectual disability” and a person has to have had the disability since childhood.