Salon.com > Of Mice and Men http://www.salon.com Sat, 18 May 2013 18:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Steinbecks: Leave Lennie alone http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/steinbecks_leave_lennie_alone/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/steinbecks_leave_lennie_alone/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12975456 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.

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