14 June 2018 :

The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed 5-2 the death sentence imposed on Juan Carlos Rodriguez in Forsyth County, finding that the trial judge prejudicially failed to direct the jury to consider Rodriguez's impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. Evidence indicated that Rodriguez, a Salvadoran national whose family fled that country's civil war when he was a child, had an IQ in the intellectually disabled range, although the jury rejected his claim of intellectual disability. Rodriguez was sentenced on March 21, 2014 (see) for strangling his estranged wife and then decapitating her. Prosecutors allege that Juan Rodriguez beat Maria Magdalena Rodriguez, 31, on the night of Nov. 18, 2010, after she told him she was leaving him.