Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit assumes that Texas death row inmate Marvin Lee Wilson is men­tal­ly retard­ed, it ruled that he can­not raise the issue in fed­er­al court because his defense attor­ney missed a fil­ing dead­line. The U.S. Supreme Court has banned the exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal retar­da­tion, but the Fifth Circuit stat­ed that ​“how­ev­er harsh the result may be” their hands are tied by dead­lines estab­lished in the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

Wilson is on death row for the 1992 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of a police infor­mant. At a hear­ing in 2004, Wilson’s lawyers pre­sent­ed evi­dence that their clien­t’s IQ had been mea­sured at 61, which meets the ​“70 or below” IQ thresh­old often used to iden­ti­fy those with men­tal retar­da­tion. The defense attor­neys also pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist and a child­hood friend, both of whom tes­ti­fied about Wilson’s lim­it­ed abil­i­ties. Despite that evi­dence, Judge Larry Gist of the state dis­trict court in Beaumont, Texas, ruled that Wilson had failed to prove that he was men­tal­ly retard­ed. Gist’s deci­sion was lat­er affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. As Wilson’s attor­ney pre­pared to present his clien­t’s case before the fed­er­al court, he said that he became tan­gled in the pro­ce­dures and dead­lines estab­lished in the 1996 fed­er­al law, an error that caused him to miss the fed­er­al fil­ing dead­line.

Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court sim­i­lar­ly banned the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, James Marcus of the Texas Defenser Service stat­ed, ​“Executing some­one who is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly exempt from the death penal­ty would be new ground even for Texas. If Mr. Wilson had been 14 years old at the time of the crime but, in the eyes of the court, the issue was raised late, would it be O.K. for Texas to kill him? The ques­tion in this case is no dif­fer­ent.”

(New York Times, December 17, 2005). See Mental Retardation.

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