If a lawyer’s slip-up can lead to the execution of someone who is exempt from capital punishment, the American justice system is diminished
From a 2005 editorial on Texas’s refusal to block the execution of Marvin Lee Wilson, although his IQ of 61 should render him constitutionally ineligible. Wilson is due to be executed August 7th.
Texas, which executes prisoners at a rate four times that of any other state, has chosen to measure mental disability not by the clinical standard employed by the U.S. Supreme Court and approved by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, but by “Briseño Factors” , which include whether of not a defendant is married, has children or holds a job as indicators of his or her intelligence.
FILM: At the Death House Door
Source: The New York Times
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