Retarded on death row in legal limbo: State does little after high court ruling
Almost a year ago, the US Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally retarded. To date, Texas correctional officials still have no idea how many of the 449 inmates on death row are retarded. To complicate matters, there is no system in place to ensure that retarded inmates will not be executed.
Critics say that before the high court ruling last June, Texas had already executed at least six people who were demonstrably retarded. And now a combination of legal complications, judges' and lawyers' lack of knowledge about the disability and Texas officials' disinterest in addressing the issue has resulted in a failure, experts fear, to stop the execution of more mentally retarded people in the future.
Legislative efforts to comply with the Supreme Court ruling are focused on identifying the mentally retarded before trial, not finding those already on death row.
"People facing the death penalty here are dependent on the good will of their lawyers," Houston defense attorney Dick Burr said. "It means that some people are lucky and others are not."
With no systematic effort to find and remove qualifying inmates from death row, as North Carolina and other states have done, one can only guess how many mentally retarded are still awaiting execution. Texas prisons routinely administer IQ tests to all incoming prisoners -- except those on death row, since these inmates are not eligible for special placement.
Statewide, about 3 percent of the population is mentally retarded, according to the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. But considering that 7 percent of Texas convicts tested have IQs below 70, a commonly accepted benchmark for mental retardation, there could be 31 condemned inmates who qualify to have their death sentences lifted.
The unspoken reality here is that state officials are dragging their feet on this issue. The death penalty is popular in Texas, and there has been no political groundswell on this issue. Texans, to all indications, have no problems executing the retarded, and many view this issue as the Supreme Court's meddling in a matter they don't understand. Of course, there are those, including Governor Rick Perry, who don't see a problem with the way Texas conducts their executions.
Defenders of Texas' execution procedures, including Gov. Rick Perry, say the system already had safeguards in place and they have no reason to believe anyone on death row is mentally retarded.
"I don't know of any who are mentally retarded," Roe Wilson, the assistant district attorney who handles most of Harris County's capital appeals, said of death row offenders prosecuted in Houston.
Coming from an attorney, the "Hey, some of my best friends are [insert ethnic group here]..." argument is specious at best and disingenuous at worst. Pretending that there is no problem so that Texas may maintain the status quo will place this state in violation of the ruling of the highest court in the land. You'd think an officer of the court would have a problem with conducting himself in that manner. Apparently not. Who says frontier justice is dead?
