Steinbecks: Leave Lennie alone

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Last night Texas shocked the world with the execution of 54-year-old Marvin Wilson, a mentally retarded man with an IQ of 61. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which banned executing the mentally disabled, the court refused to grant a stay of execution just hours before the scheduled lethal injection.

While it’s no secret that Texas has an insatiable appetite for capital punishment (Wilson’s death marked the 245th inmate executed under Gov. Rick Perry), the state has gone to extreme lengths to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ban on executing the mentally retarded.

Texas’ next dubious execution

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:50:00 +0000

The state of Texas likes killing people, and it’s not terribly particular about whom it kills. In recent years Texas has executed people who were severely mentally ill, represented by frighteningly incompetent lawyers, and almost certainly innocent.

The latest innovation in justice Texas-style is illustrated by the state’s plan to execute Marvin Wilson, a mentally retarded prisoner with an IQ of 61. Wilson is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday, and, if the execution isn’t stopped, he will become the clearest case yet of a mentally retarded person being put to death by the state, despite a decade-old Supreme Court decision barring such judicial killings.

Salon.com > Marvin Wilson

Steinbecks: Leave Lennie alone

Texas’ next dubious execution