Texas death row inmate Marvin Wilson is scheduled to be executed on August 7, 2012. Wilson is mentally handicapped but the state does not care., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
US state of Texas set to execute mentally disabled prisoner
Mon Aug 6, 2012 6:25AM GMT
presstv.ir
“While a majority of countries have stopped executing anyone, let alone people with mental disabilities, the USA continues to buck this global trend, with Texas all too often leading the way.”
Amnesty International
A mentally retarded African-American prisoner is to be put to death by lethal injection in the US state of Texas despite a ban on the execution of inmates with mental disabilities.
Marvin Wilson, 54, will be executed on Tuesday although he has been recognized as "mentally retarded" in medical tests.
The US Supreme Court ruled against the execution of prisoners with mental disabilities in 2002, but Texas has denied Wilson clemency.
Wilson, with an IQ of only 61, has already been convicted of a 1992 murder but the inmate says he is innocent. In Texas, the benchmark for mental retardation is an IQ of about 70 or below.
Amnesty International has called on Texas’ authorities to stop the execution.
“While a majority of countries have stopped executing anyone, let alone people with mental disabilities, the USA continues to buck this global trend, with Texas all too often leading the way,” said Rob Freer, the Amnesty’s USA researcher.
In another similar case in the state of Georgia, a mentally handicapped man named Warren Hill is set to face the same fate.
Medical tests have proven that the 52-year-old man suffers from significant mental disabilities.
"It is a violation of the (constitutional) protections on the death penalty to impose the supreme punishment on individuals suffering from psycho-social handicaps," said Christof Heyns, of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Last month, a 33-year-old man with mental impairments was executed in Texas by lethal injection.
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