In fact, because of the volume, I'll break it up into four posts. This post will contain significant commentary, then a news article by Renee Feltz in the Texas Observer, followed by intenational condemnation, and more on the Steinbeck family.
Let's begin with today's Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, "Can't justify this execution."
Marvin Wilson is dead.
Texas, ever fastidious in carrying out the death penalty, executed the 54-year-old man by lethal injection Tuesday night, even though by clinical standards, he was mentally impaired.
The execution seemed to contradict the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2002 decision, which prohibited the execution of the mentally impaired as cruel and unusual punishment forbidden under the Eighth Amendment.
But the now more-conservative court rejected without comment a last-ditch appeal by Wilson's lawyers. That made no sense. For 10 years, a stop sign erected by the Supreme Court had effectively ended the practice of putting people on death row when they are intellectually disabled.
The court correctly pointed out in its 2002 Atkins v. Virginia ruling that people with disabilities in reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses cannot understand what they have done, or what is happening to them, so they should not be executed.
Unfortunately, that ruling also granted some discretion to the states to determine who should be considered mentally impaired. And Texas used that opening as a free pass to stick to its propensity to execute without distinction.
Andrew Cohen has another classic post at the Atlantic, "Of Mice And Men: The Execution of Marvin Wilson." Here's the beginning:
At 6:26 p.m local time last night, an hour or so after the last appeal was denied, Texas executed a mentally retarded black man named Marvin Wilson, a man who could not handle money or navigate a phone book, a man who sucked his thumb and could not always tell the difference between left and right, a man who, as a child, could not match his socks, tie his shoes or button his clothes, a 54-year-old man with an IQ of 61* which, his attorneys were quick to point out, is "below the first percentile of human intelligence."
Texas accomplished this unrepentant bit of business despite a 2002 decision of the United States Supreme Court styled Atkins v. Virginia, a ruling which many of us at the time believed meant the end of executions for men, like Wilson, whose simple minds could not fathom the concept of the act. Boy, were we wrong. Today, Atkins seems as dead as Wilson, another example of the misdirection today's justices have perfected, another episode where the practical remedy doesn't remotely match the heralded right.
Without dissent or comment, the Supreme Court just rejected a last-minute appeal by Wilson's lawyers on Tuesday, as if it were somehow clear, to anyone in the world, why the precedent created by the Atkins case wasn't somehow relevant to the Wilson case. After all, wasn't the defendant in the Atkins case, Daryl Renard Atkins, a man with an IQ of 59, just two points above Wilson? And, in Atkins, didn't Justice John Paul Stevens write this for 6-3 majority?
All of Cohen's Atlantic writings on capital punishment are now available as, "The Death Penalty in America."
"Supreme Court must not allow executions of the mentally impaired," is Laura Moye's commentary at CNN. She's the director of Amnesty International USA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign.
The United States has not yet arrived at the position that governments should not have the irreversible God-like power to execute its citizens as the majority of countries in the world have. But 10 years ago, the Supreme Court at least recognized that there ought to be limits to this awful power.
The insane, children and those who are not mentally developed are more vulnerable than the rest of us. They are more easily manipulated, they are less capable of making sound judgments and they often need help carrying out basic daily functions. We treat them differently because we are humane and civilized, right?
The U.S. Supreme Court will receive more cases like the Wilson case until it stands up to the states and insists that they develop better scientific and reasonable criteria for judging a person's mental capacity that respect today's standards of decency.
The United States just sustained another black eye on the world stage when Texas was allowed to execute a man with the mind of 7-year-old. The egregiousness of this act is heightened for a country that claims the moral high ground and global leadership on human rights.
Executing a poor, African-American, intellectually disabled man shows once again the arbitrary nature of the death penalty. That was why the Supreme Court halted capital punishment 40 years ago in its Furman v. Georgia decision. In Gregg v. Georgia, the court allowed states to resume the death penalty after a four-year hiatus provided they reserve it for the "worst of the worst" offenders. Wilson hardly exemplifies this principle.
Esquire posts, "The Death Penalty Is Very Good Politics. Don't Forget It." It's by Charles P. Pierce.
I know I'm supposed to be outraged that Texas executed a guy with an IQ well below optimal room temperature. I know I'm supposed to be outraged that the Supreme Court Of The United States took about eleven seconds out of its busy workday to decide that Texas could kill this guy despite the fact that one of its own precedents would seem to mitigate against it....
The Supreme Court issued a 2002 ruling outlawing the execution of the mentally impaired, but left it to states to determine what constitutes mental impairment. Kovarsky argued that Texas was trying to skirt the ban by altering the generally accepted definitions of mental impairment to the point where gaining relief for an inmate is "virtually unobtainable."
This is because Texas wants to kill people. The governor of Texas, the goodhearted Goodhair with Christ in his heart, likes killing people. (One of the few actual ovations he got during his misbegotten presidential run was when he mentioned how many people he'd killed.) Killing people is very good politics. And, frankly, I agree with Goodhair on this. If you want to have a death penalty, and if you believe in all the barbaric arguments on its behalf, then you simply cannot care whether or not you execute the odd retarded person or two. The most singularly clumsy moral contortions we have in this country take place over the issue of whether you can wedge a death penalty into the system of laws that this country claims to have. You simply cannot do that. A system based on serious due process and on the primacy of the rights of the accused simply does not have the ethical space for a death penalty to inhabit. The death penalty is an act of emotion, of vengeance, now and always. Once you let those factors into your legal system, the "softer" elements of that system cannot prevail. The death penalty itself will not permit it. What remains is that which ultimately came to disgust former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who announced late in his tenure that he would no longer "tinker with the machinery of death."
"A Final Note About Marvin Wilson, Texas Executions And The Word ‘Retarded’," by Ian Millhiser at Think Progress.
In writing about Wilson’s final, unsuccessful appeals for his life, I made the editorial decision to refer to his disability by the name currently assigned to it by clinicians and by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, that name reads much more like a hateful taunt than the kind of term that is appropriate in a scientific text or a courthouse — the clinical and legal name for Wilson’s disability is “mental retardation.”
As some writers that I respect a great deal questioned this editorial decision, I wanted to take a moment to explain why this decision was made, and why I believed it was necessary to avoid papering over a serious flaw in our justice system. I will also note that, after the Supreme Court decided not to halt Wilson’s execution last night, a colleague pointed out to me that, while the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders uses the term “mental retardation” to describe Wilson’s disability, the forthcoming edition of this manual will likely use the term “intellectual disability.” In the future, I will use this far less distressing term to describe Wilson’s disability, except when quoting court decisions or other documents that still use the soon-to-be-antiquated term.
Some news outlets chose to use terms such as “mentally impaired” or “mentally disabled” to describe Mr. Wilson’s disability, but these terms lack precision. Wilson was not just mentally disabled, he had a very specific mental disability that should have enabled him to invoke the Eight Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court did not hold that all mentally disabled persons cannot be executed, it held that “death is not a suitable punishment for a mentally retarded criminal.” And the relative narrowness of this holding can often leave other mentally disabled persons unable to claim the Constitution’s protection.
"Texas Death Penalty Enforced Based On Outdated Methods Inspired By John Steinbeck Book," by Jason Linkins at Huffington Post.
Given Texas' generally favorable disposition towards using capital punishment, it's not surprising that Wilson ended up on death row. But Wilson's lawyers worked hard to spare him from the death penalty, and they were armed with a 2004 psychological evaluation that determined Wilson had an IQ of only 61. As the Associated Press reported, this was "below the generally accepted minimum competency standard of 70," and thus below the acceptable threshold for execution eligibility established by the Supreme Court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. (In that 2002, 6-3 ruling, the Court found that executing mentally inpaired individuals violated the spirit of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment.)
The AP reported that prosecutors argued that the single psychological test was "possibly faulty" and not "supported by other tests and assessments over the years." State attorneys also pointed to Wilson's facility with his "drug-dealing, street-gambler, criminal lifestyle," in which he demonstrated the ability to "manage money" and implement "inventive" criminal "schemes."
All of which is a solid argument, like it or not. But as it turns out, that's not the entire argument Texas authorities made in their prosecution and condemnation of Wilson. Now, Wilson's death has cast a light on a set of standards that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has been using to adjudicate the mental fitness of death row convicts. As it turns out, their determinations are based on standards that are just as (if not more so) "unfounded and highly subjective" as the psychological exam to which prosecutors objected. And those standards aren't so much based in science as they are based on a novel that people read in the eleventh grade.
Earlier coverage of Marvin Wilson's case begins at the link. Next, coverage of Renee Feltz' latest article for the Texas Observer.
Related posts are in the mental retardation index.
As I often point out, mental retardation is now generally referred to as a developmental or intellectual disability. Because it has a specific meaning with respect to capital cases, I continue to use the older term.
More on Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling banning the execution of those with mental retardation, is via Oyez.
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