The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stay tonight's execution of Marvin Wilson.
The breaking news AP report is, "US Supreme Court Allows Execution of Texas Inmate."
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Tuesday evening execution of a Texas death row inmate whose lawyers say is ineligible for the death penalty because of his low IQ.
Marvin Wilson, 54, was sentenced to death for killing a police informant two decades ago. His attorneys pointed to a psychological test that pegged his IQ at 61, below the threshold of 70 that would suggest he's mentally impaired. But lower courts agreed with state attorneys who questioned the test's validity.
The Supreme Court denied his request for a stay of execution less than two hours before his scheduled 6 p.m. lethal injection.
Attorneys for the state argued Wilson's claim was based on a single 2004 test that may have been faulty and that his mental impairment claim wasn't supported by other tests and assessments of him over the years.
There has been media attention to the case throughout the day. The Houston Chronicle has posted, "Steinbeck's son decries court opinion that invoked 'Lennie'," by Allan Turner.
Thomas Steinbeck, son of Nobel laureate John Steinbeck and a California-based novelist and journalist, sharply criticized the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for its reference to the character Lennie Small in a ruling considering factors indicative of retardation.
And:
Thomas Steinbeck's wife, Gail Steinbeck, said the couple was alerted to the reference to the fictional character by an article appearing in the openly anti-death penalty The Guardian, an English newspaper.
She said she showed the article to the writer and "his ears turned red" in anger.
"I couldn't get this thing off my mind," she said. "I was sitting there and my skin kept crawling."
Gail Steinbeck said the court misinterpreted the Lennie Small character, saying, "What Steinbeck was saying in that story had nothing to do with execution. It was about friendship between two men..."
Steinbeck's statement is the second item in the linked post.
The Daily Beast posts, "Retarded—And Condemned To Die In Texas," by Matthew DeLuca.
The Daily Beast has annotated the report of the neuropsychologist, Donald Trahan, which is at the center of Wilson’s petition to the Supreme Court. Trahan wrote the report following his 8-hour assessment of Wilson in 2004. We spoke to both Trahan and Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
You can view the annotated Trajan report at the link.
Earlier coverage of Marvin Wilson's case begins at the link.
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