Texas Set to Execute 'Mentally Retarded' Man

August 07, 2012 from Al Jazeera English

A man whose lawyers say is clinically "mentally retarded" is set to be put to death by lethal injection in Texas. Marvin Wilson was convicted of fatally shooting a police drug informant nearly 20 years ago, with the sentence of death by lethal injection. The US Supreme Court soon afterwards found the penalty to be in violation of the constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment when imposed on the mentally retarded. Psychologists measured Wilson's IQ in the bottom one percentile, or about equal to that of an average five-year-old child.

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Marvin Wilson

Marvin Lee Wilson was an American murderer who was executed by the State of Texas on August 7, 2012. He entered death row on May 9, 1992, for the murder of a police drug informant. Wilson abducted and shot 21-year-old Jerry Robert Williams following a physical confrontation be... Explore this topic

Lethal injection

Lethal injection is the practice of injecting person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia... Explore this topic

Huntsville Prison

Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit, nicknamed "Walls Unit," is a Texas state prison located in Huntsville, Texas, United States. The approximately 54.36-acre facility, near Downtown Huntsville, is operated by the Correctional Institutions Division of the... Explore this topic

Texas

Texas is the second most populous and the second-largest of the 50 states in the United States of America, and the largest state in the 48 contiguous United States. Geographically located in the South Central part of the country, Texas shares an international border with the M... Explore this topic

Death row

Death row, in English speaking countries that have capital punishment is the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility... Explore this topic

Mental retardation

Mental retardation or general learning disability is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient sc... Explore this topic

Anti-death penalty

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Huntsville

Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas, United States. The population is 38,548 as of the 2010 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is located 70 miles north of Houston in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate... Explore this topic

Cruel and unusual punishment

Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase describing punishment which is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to it. Explore this topic

Death sentence

Capital punishment or the death penalty is a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The judicial decree that someone be punished in this manner is a death sentence, while the actual process of killing the person is an execution... Explore this topic

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Marvin Wilson

Lethal injection

Huntsville Prison

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