Supreme Court allows Texas execution despite claims of intellectual disability News
Supreme Court allows Texas execution despite claims of intellectual disability

[JURIST] A man with an IQ of 67 was executed in Texas on Thursday after the US Supreme Court [official website] denied two pleas for delay that same day. Defense attorneys for Robert Ladd said that his death violates the Constitution [press release], and that his life would have been spared in any other state because of his IQ. After Texas courts denied an appeal that Ladd was ineligible for execution, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay and to review the ruling. The first plea [text, pdf] claimed that his IQ would render him intellectually disabled, making the execution unconstitutional. The second plea [text, pdf] challenged the execution protocol used in Texas. In response, Texas state officials argued that federal courts did not have the authority to overrule the state’s determination of Ladd’s mental competence. As for the second plea, Texas stated that the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] affirmed a trial court’s ruling that the method used by the state of Texas does not violate Eighth Amendment [text] rights. A unanimous Supreme Court denied Ladd’s petition. Ladd was convicted of murder for the 1996 killing of 38-year-old Vicki Gardner, who was strangled and beat with a hammer before being set on fire in her apartment. Her body was found with her arms and legs bound by electrical wire. Robert Ladd was pronounced dead [AP report] at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville at 7:25 p.m. CST.

Use of the death penalty [JURIST backgrounder] has been a controversial issue throughout the US and internationally. Earlier this month an Indiana senator proposed a bill [JURIST report] to end the death penalty in the state, and the Washington state legislature proposed bills [JURIST report] on Monday to eliminate the death penalty. In May the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] urged the US to impose a moratorium [JURIST report] on the use of the death penalty following a botched execution [JURIST reports] performed in Oklahoma the previous week. In April the Supreme Court of Oklahoma [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that inmates’ constitutional rights were not violated by keeping the sources of lethal injection drugs secret. Earlier that month a judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri [official website] allowed the continuation [JURIST report] of a lawsuit challenging a bill that would conceal the identities of individuals involved in the administration of the death penalty.

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