EDITORIAL: "Mentally retarded and on death row," published by the New York Times on August 3, 2012.

GIST: " Marvin Wilson, with an I.Q. of 61, is scheduled to be put to death in Texas on Tuesday. His execution would directly contradict the Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia that “the mentally retarded should be categorically excluded from execution” because of “their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment and control of their impulses.” The court should accept Mr. Wilson’s case for review and end Texas’s illegal defiance of its explicit holding that the death penalty for the mentally retarded is unconstitutional......... How much more “clearly established” could the federal law be than the Supreme Court’s statement that “the mentally retarded should be categorically excluded from execution”? The state’s brazen refusal to follow that rule is unreasonable by any but the most extreme view. Texas has never contested Marvin Wilson’s claim of mental retardation. The state has simply refused to accept him as retarded enough to be exempted from execution. His lawyers told the Supreme Court in a brief, “If he does not obtain federal habeas relief, he will own the grisly distinction as the Texas Atkins claimant executed with the lowest” undisputed I.Q. score.
The court must stop this cruel and unconstitutional execution of a mentally retarded man."

The entire editorial can be found at: