Texas Set to Execute a Man with an IQ of 61
>In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of
>so-called "mentally retarded" people was unconstitutional, a form of cruel
>and unusual punishment. Yet Texas, which executes far more peopleeach year
>than any other state, is set to kill Marvin Wilson by lethal injection
>tomorrow unless the Court steps in. Liliana Segura at The Nationnotes:
>Thus, barring a last-minute intervention, a man who has been diagnosed with
>an IQ of 61 and who sucked his thumb well into adulthood, now faces the
>prospect of being strapped to a gurney and injected with lethal chemicals
>until he is pronounced dead. “It doesn't usually get to this point when you
>have an Atkins claim this strong,” his lawyer, Lee Kovarsky, told me over the
>phone on Sunday. “This claim is really sort of the worst of the worst.”
>>Kovarsky grew up in Texas and has seen his share of death row injustices.
>>Yet, clients like his are hardly exceptional. “If getting the death penalty
>>is like getting struck by lightning,” he says, drawing on Justice Potter
>>Stewart's famous quote about the arbitrariness of capital punishment, “then
>>it seems to strike offenders with MR a lot. Because their disability
>>prevents them from effectively disputing guilt or culpability, they end up
>>on death row for some of the least aggravated first-degree murders that are
>>tried to verdict."
>The evidence against Wilson, Segura notes, is murky at best--he was convicted
>on eyewitness testimony that has proved shaky, the testimony of his
>accomplice and his accomplice's wife that he was the primary gunman in the
>murder of police informant Jerry Williams.
>But no matter what Wilson is guilty of, the law of the land states that
>people with severe intellectual disabilities cannot be executed. So why is
>Texas getting away with this?
>Segura again:
>While most death penalty states have passed legislation to define what
>qualifies as intellectual disability, based on similar clinical standards as
>the Atkinscourt, Texas has not.
>>Instead, it focuses on a dubious set of invented criteria that are known as
>>the “Briseño factors.” Named after another Texas death row case, these seven
>>non-clinical measures are meant to show whether a given defendant displays a
>>“level and degree of mental retardation at which a consensus of Texas
>>citizens would agree that a person should be exempted from the death
>>penalty.”
>The standards? Include comparing a defendant to the character Lennie from
>John Steinbeck's (fictional) Of Mice and Men. Not exactly stellar scientific
>advice, relying on the average Texan to discern whether a man is disabled
>enough to not be executed..
