STORY: "'Child-like' man who sucks his thumb and has an IQ of 61 set to face execution despite last-minute appeals against death sentence," by reporter Nina Golgowski, published in the Mail-Online on August 5, 2012.

GIST: "He was convicted of a 1992 murder which he says he did not commit - and many activists also argue that his execution conflicts with a Supreme Court ruling which forbids states from putting mentally retarded people to death. His supporters believe that his exceptionally low IQ qualifies him to be put in that category. ‘This case really does very much push the line,’ Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School told the Huffington Post. ‘We're talking about a mental child.’ According to the Post, in the state of Texas individuals having an IQ of 70 or below are deemed mentally retarded. In many other U.S. states the boundary is 75 or lower. But Texas has found that despite his low IQ level he is not mentally slow enough to qualify for the Supreme Court's ruling that would spare his life. That 2002 ruling, Atkins v. Virginia, states that 'the mentally retarded should be categorically excluded from execution' due to 'their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment and control of their impulses.' 'I couldn't believe it when I saw him still sucking his thumb when his son was born,' Wilson’s younger sister Kim Armstrong recalled in a 2003 affidavit. 'Marvin was in his twenties.'"