STORY: How Texas can execute a man with an IQ of 61," by Brian Evans, posted on the Amnesty USA site on August 2, 2012.
GIST: "According to his most recent test, Marvin Wilson has an IQ of 61 (most states bar executions for those with IQs at 70 or below). That puts him below the first percentile of human intelligence,
and he’s in an even lower percentile for adaptive functioning. Despite
the US Supreme Court’s ten-year old ban on executing the “mentally
retarded” (Atkins v. Virginia), Marvin Wilson faces execution in Texas on August 7.........To determine whether its “level and degree of mental retardation” has
been reached, the TCCA developed a set of seven questions that the
court itself suggested were inspired by Lennie Small, the mentally
impaired ranch hand in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Lennie is a fictional character from a book written 75 years ago. The American Association of Intellectual and Development Disabilities (AAIDD) has written that these 7 questions “…are based on false stereotypes about mental retardation that effectively exclude all but the most severely incapacitated.” The AAIDD (known then as AAMR), was the main scientific authority noted by the US Supreme Court in Atkins. Nonetheless, Marvin Wilson was evaluated by the TCCA’s dubious
criteria, and found to be eligible for execution. So it seems that by
interpreting a US Supreme Court ruling with 1930s literature instead of
21st century science, Texas has effectively exempted some prisoners with
“mental retardation” from the protections ordered by our nation’s
highest court. And unless the US Supreme Court or someone intervenes, Texas will execute Marvin Wilson on August 7."
The entire post can be found at:
