Inmate With Low I.Q. Nears Execution in Texas

HOUSTON — A 44-year-man whose lawyers claim he is mentally retarded is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening in Huntsville, Tex., unless the United States Supreme Court agrees to hear his case.

The man, Bobby Wayne Woods, whose I.Q. hovers around the level of a mildly retarded person’s, was convicted of the brutal killing of an 11-year-old girl in 1997 and sentenced to death.

The debate over whether he should be executed reflects the gray area left by the Supreme Court in 2002, when it ruled the mentally impaired were not eligible for the death penalty but left it up to state courts to interpret which inmates qualified as impaired.

Mr. Woods’s lawyers argue that his intelligence scores are low enough that he should be spared because of the Supreme Court ban in Atkins v. Virginia. But several courts have rejected that claim.

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Inmate With Low I.Q. Nears Execution in Texas

He was capable of committing the crime. He should be held accountable, and subsequently, he should be punished for his crime in an appropriate manner.

Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor who represents Mr. Woods, said in a pleading that “his I.Q. hovers around 70, the magical cutoff point for determining whether someone is mentally retarded.”

“He’s transparently childlike and simple,” she said. “It’s a travesty.”

DAMN the bleeding hearts! DAMN all of them. There truly IS a travesty here. That travesty took place with the MURDER of an innocent 11 year old girl. SHE was childlike, she may have been a simple child, I don’t know, but I do know this; everything she was, everything she may have become, every accomplishment and accolade she may have earned, was taken away from her when she was murdered.

WHO speaks out for HER? WHO speaks out for Sarah Patterson?

The bleeding heart anti death penalty people, and libbers in general, all scream about the execution of a MURDERER but have no problem with killing an innocent baby.

On April 30, 1997, Woods entered the home of his ex-girlfriend, Schwanna Patterson, through an open window. He then beat and sexually assaulted Patterson’s 11-year-old daughter, then abducted her and her nine-year-old brother and took them to a cemetery. There, Woods severely beat the boy about the head, resulting in serious injury and murdered the girl by cutting her throat. SOURCE

It took the original story several paragraphs before they even mentioned the name of the victim or her mother. Of course the NYT is a lot more concerned with the defense of the murderer than they are the person that was murdered. It is a rare occasion that I will even use the NYT as a source for a story, but this time they were the only source I could readily find.

But that standard has been applied unevenly by state courts, according to a study by Cornell law professors. Some state courts in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas have held that inmates with scores as low as 66 are not impaired, while an inmate in California with a score of 84 was declared mentally retarded.

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Death penalty opponents rally at Capitol

AUSTIN — Death penalty opponents, convinced an innocent man was executed in 2004, staged a rally Saturday at the Texas Capitol to call for a moratorium on capital punishment and to highlight the controversial case of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Willingham was convicted of capital murder for the 1991 deaths of his three children in a fire at their Corsicana home. Forensic scientists have called into question arson evidence used to convict Willingham, who maintained his innocence until his death by lethal injection.

Dozens of protesters marched from the Capitol down Congress Avenue, waving placards and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, the death penalty has got to go.”

Organizers of the rally said they want to bring attention to the Willingham case and Gov. Rick Perry’s shakeup of the commission that was investigating the science used to convict him.

“We urge the people and the governor to take a look at this case and examine the new evidence,” said Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network. “There is no scientific evidence of arson in this case, and if there was no arson, there was no crime … We want Texas to admit that it’s made a tragic mistake here.”

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Marchers in Austin urge Texas to halt executions

I am a staunch supporter of the death penalty. What I don’t agree with is the merciful way that capital punishment is administered. I am a believer in doing unto criminals as they have done to their victims.

I believe that if some cretin commits murder(s) and is convicted of that crime, and his one and only appeal is denied, that cretin needs to be executed in the exact same manner that he/she used to kill their victim(s).

In this story, the primary reason for the protest in the Texas Capitol, was a particularly disgusting animal named Cameron Todd Willingham. He was convicted of setting the fire that killed his children. Like crime, like execution. Take him to some old, abandoned building, tie him to a chair, douse the place with gasoline and light it up. End of his problems in this world.

There is only one part of the Bill of Rights that I disagree with, the 8th Amendment, and it’s only a very small part OF the 8th, bail and fines, that’s great, but the cruel and unusual part gives me great pause:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I somehow don’t think the Framers had any idea regarding the depths of depravity that some monsters could sink to.

If someone unwittingly becomes a victim, that victim has NO option other than the cruel and unusual mood of their murderer. Does it not make sense to dispatch said murderer in the same fashion that he/she used?

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