Margaret A. Nygren is Executive Director of the American Association On Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Her OpEd, "Texas should not execute intellectually disabled man," in today's Houston Chronicle tops news of Marvin Wilson's case.
In my work as the executive director of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), I have worked with many people who have intellectual disability, formerly known as mental retardation. Most of us know people who have intellectual disability through our extended circle of friends, family, church, schools and the like. We may be familiar with the diversity of people with intellectual disability, and many have first-hand experience of some of the vast variations in how this disability appears. However, despite the variety of ways that intellectual disability may appear to a layman, it is a medical diagnosis based on clinical indications; an individual either has it, or he does not.
In 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court categorically banned the execution of persons with (what was then known as) mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia, the court specifically endorsed AAIDD's clinical definition of intellectual disability. Indeed, the elements of the current clinical conditions to diagnose intellectual disability have been consistent for nearly 100 years.
Yet Texas plans to execute a man named Marvin Lee Wilson next Tuesday, Aug. 7, despite an IQ score of 61 and a complete evaluation by a specialist, both of which confirm that Wilson has intellectual disability, with the specific diagnosis of mild mental retardation. Make no mistake, if a trained clinician finds that an individual has an intellectual disability, the fact that the impairment is deemed mild rather than severe does not negate nor diminish the diagnosis or its profound impact on an individual's abilities.
And:
Intellectual disability is a medical condition and should be assessed by a specialist. Unfortunately for its citizens, Texas evaluates defendants for intellectual disability using factors that are not used by medical professionals, and are based on false stereotypes that exclude all but the most severely incapacitated. Evaluating individuals using these factors, called the Briseño factors, is fundamentally incompatible with the scientific and clinical understanding of intellectual disability.
When Wilson came before the state of Texas to prove his intellectual disability and seek his constitutional protection from execution, the state did not present any evidence against him having an intellectual disability. The state did not provide any expert witnesses (or witnesses of any kind) to refute the court-appointed, board-certified expert's diagnosis of mild mental retardation. However, because Texas unfairly uses unscientific factors to cherry-pick which people with intellectual disability will be exempt from execution, Wilson was essentially deemed "not disabled enough" to receive the constitutional protection he is entitled to because of his medical condition.
This is simply not good enough.
"Texas Messes with Court Precedent, Prepares to Execute Another Mentally Disabled Person," by Jeremy Leaming at the American Constitution Society blog.
In summer 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for states to execute mentally disabled people. But its opinion in Atkins v. Virginia has failed to take hold in Texas, a state that as University of Colorado law school professor Paul Campos puts it “likes killing people, and it’s not terribly particular about whom it kills.”
And:
The state is on the verge of executing yet another mentally disabled man, Marvin Wilson. Wilson’s attorney Lee Kovarsky, an assistant professor of law at the University of Maryland, has urged the Supreme Court to intervene to stop the execution set for Aug. 7. Wilson was convicted of allegedly killing a drug informant, but Kovarsky’s petition for a writ of certiorari casts serious doubt on that.
Citing Atkins, Wilson’s attorney notes that Donald Trahan, a neuropsychologist appointed by the court to examine Wilson, diagnosed him as suffering “mental retardation.” Wilson, Kovarsky continues, “received a 61 on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale …, recognized as the gold standard of intellectual assessment. The evaluation places Wilson well below the “first percentile of human intelligence.”
Think Progress posts, "Texas Set To Unconstitutionally Execute A Mentally Retarded Man Next Week," by Ian Millhiser.
Texas hopes to exploit a potential loophole in the Supreme Court’s decision declaring executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in order to move forward with this execution. Although the Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia references the clinical definition of mental retardation — a person with an IQ of 70 or less who demonstrated “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning” before the age of 18 is generally considered mentally retarded — it also left “to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.” So Texas has designed its own, narrow definition of mental retardation that bears little resemblance to the one used by scientists and clinicians. A petition is currently pending in the Supreme Court seeking to close this loophole and save Wilson’s life.
The Beaumont Enterprise Bayou blog posts, "Marvin Lee Wilson: Is Beaumont’s current condemned man mentally retarded?"
On Tuesday, Texas will execute Marvin Lee Wilson for the 1992 murder of a confidential Beaumont police informant.
Texas is executing people like it is its job.
We’re on pace to kill off 17 people by the end of the year, matching 2010′s torrid pace.
For Wilson, this is about to be the culmination of a long and controversial legal fight. The question: Is Wilson mentally retarded? ‘Cause based his IQ numbers, it would be unconstitutional to put him to death.
"Texas man due to be executed despite evidence of mental disability," at Amnesty International.
A decade ago, in Atkins v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court prohibited the execution of offenders with “mental retardation”, but left it up to the individual states as to how to comply with the ruling.
“While a majority of countries have stopped executing anyone, let alone people with mental disabilities, the USA continues to buck this global trend, with Texas all too often leading the way,” said Rob Freer, Amnesty International’s USA Researcher.
“And leaving it up to Texas how to comply with the Atkins ruling appears to have been something akin to leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse.”
Before the Atkins ruling, Texas executed more inmates diagnosed with “mental retardation” than any other state. A decade on, its legislature has yet to enact a law to comply with Atkins, and there are fears that “temporary” guidelines developed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) in 2004 are letting the state execute offenders who should be exempted from this punishment under the Constitution.
Earlier coverage of Marvin Wilson's case begins at the link. 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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