UPDATE: Wesbrook was exe­cut­ed on Mar. 9. EARLIER: Coy Wesbrook is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on March 9. If the exe­cu­tion pro­ceeds, it will be the eighth in the U.S. this year, half of which have been in Texas. Wesbrook killed five peo­ple after a con­fronta­tion with his ex-wife. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty (for­mer­ly referred to as ​“men­tal retar­da­tion”) are exempt from the death penal­ty. Wesbrook was test­ed for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty at the request of the pros­e­cu­tion, fol­low­ing a chal­lenge by Wesbrook’s attor­neys that he should be spared. Psychologist George Denkowski exam­ined Wesbrook and ini­tial­ly sub­mit­ted a report find­ing he had an IQ of 66, plac­ing him below the stan­dard lev­el for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abilty. Several months lat­er, he filed a new report based on ​“non-intel­lec­tu­al fac­tors” that said Wesbrook’s ​“actu­al adult gen­er­al intel­li­gence func­tion­ing is esti­mat­ed to be of about 84 qual­i­ty.” Ohio State University pro­fes­sor Marc Tasse, an expert on devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, said Denkowski’s meth­ods had ​“absolute­ly no sci­en­tif­ic basis.” Because of his unsci­en­tif­ic pro­ce­dures in Wesbrook’s and 15 oth­er cas­es, Denkowski was fined by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and agreed nev­er to tes­ti­fy in anoth­er crim­i­nal case. Nevertheless, the exe­cu­tion has been allowed to proceed.

(C. Tolan, ​“Texas is about to exe­cute a man who calls him­self ​‘Elvis’ and may be men­tal­ly dis­abled,” Fusion, March 7, 2016). See Intellectual Disability and Arbitrariness.

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