Texas Is About To Execute An Intellectually Disabled Man

[sabbat hunter]

Source: Think Progress

A Texas court on Tuesday denied a stay of execution to Robert Ladd, a convicted murderer who has an IQ of just 67, according to a test that was administered when he was a teenager. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that sentencing intellectually disabled inmates to death is cruel and unusual punishment, Ladd will be executed Thursday night unless the Supreme Court grants a last-minute appeal.
Ladd has been deemed “mentally retarded” several times throughout his life — first when he was 13 years old and then numerous times since. As an adult, he was employed with a non-profit organization that serviced individuals with intellectual disabilities. But in its ruling this week, Texas’ highest criminal court said that the Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t apply to Ladd because he “failed to satisfy his threshold burden on his claim of mental retardation.”
As the Supreme Court noted in both Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 and Hall v. Florida in 2014, “the medical community defines intellectual disability according to three criteria: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, deficits in adaptive functioning… and onset of these deficits during the developmental period.” Although Ladd was labeled “fairly obviously retarded” by the Texas Youth Commission at age 13 and later qualified for services at the Andrews Center in Tyler, Texas, which assists the intellectually disabled as well as the mentally ill, Texas’ judicial system found that he does not currently meet the state’s unique definition of intellectually disabled.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/01/29/3616830/robert-ladd-execution/

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WTF is wrong with you Texas?!?

[Lint Head]

1. What is wrong with Texas is that we have not evolved

beyond the stone age. Killing is the ultimate answer to everything. I mean virtually everything.

[mountain grammy]

2. So sad and terrible. WTF is wrong with Texas?

[hollysmom]

3. and this is news because?

seems to me they do that every other week. I will never forget that one guy that ordered ice cream for his last meal but didn't eat it, hen they asked why,he said he was saving it for after the execution.

[BlueJazz]

4. Isn't it horrible being part of a society that kills people who are...

..mentally incompetent?

I'm against the death penalty anyway and this ..to me...is murder.

[jtuck004]

5. Just enough mental ability to beat a woman to death with a hammer and set her apartment

on fire, killing her children. And then another woman after being paroled from the first crime.

[sabbat hunter]

6. so you think that a person

with an IQ of 67 should be put to death? (or anyone should be executed for that matter)?

[Lancero]

13. I don't know - What do you think...

We should do to someone who beats a woman to death and goes on to burn her children alive?

Sympathy is wasted on some people - And the murders of children are at the top of that list.

Actually, having tracked down more details on this case (The given article was mysteriously absent of details regarding to the crimes he committed...), and having overlooked the above post outlining this, it's a bit worse then I first thought. He got off of a 40 year after 16 for beating the above woman to death and burning her children alive - Guess someone was sympathetic, believing that due to his disability he shouldn't have been locked up for so long - and then went a murdered another woman.

Some people aren't worth saving. Some people refuse to realize this, making women like Vicki Ann Garner pay the ultimate price.

[jtuck004]

14. I think the death penalty is appropriate in certain cases, especially where they are hurting

others and "good people" refuse to put the resources into doing anything else.

As far as the whole IQ thing, you know those are made up numbers, right? (Anyone with at least an MEd that has any faith in an IQ number from any era ought to be...well, that's another post). Anyway, started with prisoners, etc. Read up on it, has nothing to do with this, and if you really read up on it you won't have much faith in it's supposed usefulness either. Except perhaps to defense attorneys, and the good work they do.

I suppose the argument is that he can't understand what he did, but that has nothing to do with the fact that, unless stopped, he has proven he will do it again. Do I know enough about this case to stand up and shout this? No, just cursory reading. But you just asked my opinion.

Do I think the death penalty has been - is - will be applied to innocent people? Yes. Do I think the death penalty is applied in a racist manner? Yes.

Do I think it is a useful tool, and do I think it can be appropriately applied at times? Yes. Though more often at the point where it keeps them from the imminent harm of someone else, not just pretending that it does. Otherwise it is just state-sanctioned murder.

I used to be completely opposed to it, but as I got older and saw more of the world I realized it wasn't the worst thing out there.

[jtuck004]

15. In this video is a man whose mind and viewpoint I love and respect...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc501v_richard-pryor-on-arizona-penitentia_shortfilms

Listen to his "awakening" in 1980 at the prison in Arizona. He acknowledges the racism, that these people who should be engaged in the struggle in the community are locked up, and then he talks to them...

I'm far more interested in disorganizing the system that fills these prisons, that may have left a community or town with no hope in the first place, or that treated people differently than others for the same behavior.

[FLPanhandle]

7. If he can do that, I have no sympathy for him.

BTW, who the fuck paroled that SOB in the first place?

[mindwalker_i]

8. Damn, thought this was about Bush...

[FLPanhandle]

9. LOL

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. Or Perry.

[jberryhill]

11. Why don't they make him governor?

[question everything]

12. Will Rick Perry chuckle, the way Junior did when he sent a woman to death

when he was governor?

[quadrature]

16. the Gov of Texas, whoever that is, has no authority ...

over the DP,
beyond issuance of a
one-time-per-customer, 30 day delay.

[Judi Lynn]

17. It's always a surprise to see people coming forward to express huffy outrage over a criminal,

and explain the world will never be right until they see that purson is murdered, too.

Something vital is missing.

"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," contends their very own Good Book. Also, "thou shall not kill."

Those values need to be genuine.

The day will come this country will finally be civilized enough to drop this filthy practice. It's going to happen when enough people transcend their "original" view of life created, and never transformed by awareness, when they were toddlers.

Many others outgrew it long, long ago.

[quadrature]

18. who says that?

who says that the killing of this person
(or anybody else)
makes anything right?

I do not.
............
actions have consequences

[Pauldg47]

19. Ah yes, the land of the Christian right......

....they will not abort a baby but would enjoy a lynching of a Citizen not intelligent enough to understand laws.......