Lisa Falkenberg | The Houston Chronicle | 7 August 2012
At 54, Marvin Wilson can't use a telephone book. He reads and writes on a first- or second-grade level. Those who know the Southeast Texas man say he can't match socks, he doesn't understand what a bank account is for, he's been known to fasten his belt to the point of nearly cutting off his circulation. The day his son was born, one sister recalled, he reverted to the familiar habit of sucking his thumb.
His IQ, according to the most valid indicator of human intelligence, is 61, below the first percentile. This was one of many clinical tests and factors that led a neuropsychologist with decades of experience to diagnose Wilson with "mild mental retardation."
Nevertheless, at 6 p.m. Tuesday night, the state of Texas, in your name and mine, is scheduled to kill Marvin Wilson by lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court - citing the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment - banned the execution of the mentally retarded a decade ago.
But like other federal mandates, Texas has found a way around this one, too.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 2002 decision in a case called Atkins, exempted all mentally ill offenders from execution, in part because those who struggle with impulse control, for example, are less culpable for their crimes. But also because mentally ill offenders may be especially vulnerable to wrongful convictions since they're less able to help attorneys build strong defenses.
Wilson is a textbook example. According to his attorneys' brief, Wilson was fingered as the lead shooter by a more sophisticated accomplice, and evidence of his "confession" in the murder of police informant Jerry Williams came from the accomplice's wife.
In Atkins, the high court held that the states, many of which had begun to ban executions of the mentally retarded on their own, had reached a national consensus that the practice was immoral.
Steinbeck's Lennie
Of course, certain conservative factions in Texas, as usual, fell somewhere outside those evolving standards of decency. The Supreme Court left it up to the states to design procedures to implement the ban, but the state with the most active death chamber took that as an invitation to redefine the ban itself.
In a 2004 opinion, Texas' highest court announced that, where executions were concerned, it didn't have to define "mental retardation" the same way as other states. It didn't even have to define it the same way it does for impaired Texas school children.
No, the fine jurists of Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals made up a new definition of "mentally retarded" especially for defendants in capital crimes. It wasn't based on science or the generally accepted definition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. It was based on myths, stereotypes and even a fictional character: Lennie in Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."
Forget the national consensus. The Texas court was concerned only with the Texas consensus, "the level and degree of mental retardation" that Texans would agree should be exempted from the death penalty.
"Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt," the court said. But someone else who didn't meet that stereotypical description and merely had a clinical diagnosis to prove his mental retardation? Well, that's a different story.
The court then set about redefining what it means to be mentally retarded in a capital case. The "Briseno factors" are a list of questions fact-finders should ask in criminal cases to determine whether a defendant is mentally retarded enough to be spared. The goal, of course, is to spare as few as possible.
The factors include such subjective and unscientific questions as whether a defendant can plan and lie. (My toddler is capable of both when there's a cookie within reach.) Another question asks whether family and friends in the defendant's life "think he was mentally retarded." Never mind that mental retardation can be genetic and family members themselves may be impaired. The seventh, and most problematic factor invites the fact-finder to look at how the crime was perpetrated, which introduces emotion into a process that should be solely based on reason.
Wilson's last hope
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found the lower court's interpretation reasonable. TheTexas Legislature has failed to address the issue after Gov. Rick Perry vetoed an earlier ban on such executions passed by lawmakers.
Wilson's last hope is for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in on Tuesday and grant a stay of execution so that the high court can consider his case along with another similar Texas case pending before it.
Once again we need the nation's highest court to save us from ourselves. To remind us of our humanity. To impose on us the cruel confines of decency.
Showing posts with label Death Penalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death Penalty. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Rick Perry, Christian: What Would Pilate Do?
Tom Junod | Esquire | September 7 2011
Rick Perry is a Christian. It does us no good to ask, as Christopher Hitchens did last week, if he really believes what he says he believes; better to take him at his word, for then we can hold him to it. That is, we can see if he's a Christian not only by word, but by deed — if he is Christian by the proclaimed standards of Christianity.
Of course, Perry is very much a Christian by word. He is not only a professing Christian; he is a professional Christian, whose profession of Christian faith at a mass prayer rally in Houston served as prelude to his presidential campaign. Now, there are Christians who might regard as repugnant a man engaging in public prayer for the purpose of indicating his designs on power, but the American evangelical Christians Perry was courting are not among them. These are Christians who have made their peace with power; who have made their peace with wealth; and who have made their peace with war — who have, indeed, adapted themselves to the needs of a belligerent nation as surely as their ancient ancestors made their peace, in the form of Catholicism, to the needs of Rome. American evangelical Christianity is a mutant form of Christianity, in the sense that it is an evolved form of Christianity, in the sense that it has exchanged the nearly impossible terms that Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount with terms that are much more favorable for aggressive growth and convenient for a healthy rate of return.
So it is no use applying the old "What Would Jesus Do?" standard to Rick Perry, for Perry belongs to a church that put aside that standard long ago. Would Jesus walk around in $2000 worth of hand-tooled boots? Would Jesus brag about jogging while "packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets?" Would Jesus balance his budget by cutting funds to education? Would Jesus reject all clams of science except the "science" of raising funds through patronage? These questions are absurd, not only because they're anachronistic, but also because they have nothing to do with American evangelical Christianity in theory or practice. Rick Perry can with clear conscience call himself a Christian because he has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and has as a consequence rejected the moral imperative of progressive taxation, the factual basis of evolution and global warming, and the extension of the Republican mantra of "personal freedom" into the realm of marriage. That the Jesus of the Gospels is notably forgiving in regard to sexual sins and notably unforgiving in regard to economic ones matters little; the Jesus of American evangelical Christianity has it the other way around, and that is the Jesus Rick Perry — along with millions of other Americans — has elected to follow.
Indeed, by the terms of the faith he professes, Perry might even be able to reconcile his Christianity with his enthusiastic application of the death penalty, despite the apparent contradiction of a religion created in emulation of history's most notable executionee giving its ultimate blessing to the executioner. After all, when American evangelical Christianity takes a New Testament position on the defense of "innocent" — i.e., unborn — life, it is reserving for itself the right to take an Old Testament position on the guilty kind, with the result that a religion that preaches from the pulpit against the expansion of state power in the form of Obamacare countenances it in the form of lethal injection. Although he has signed death warrants for 200 men; although like his predecessor in Austin he lacks the quality of mercy; although he has overruled even the rare recommendations of clemency from his hand-picked clemency board; although he is, on the face of it, that most un-Christian of things, a governor with a black hood, he can always say that he is following the biblical charge of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, and of fulfilling the law.
But what if he signed the death warrant for an innocent man? This is a biblical offense, no matter how you cut it. American evangelical Christians often protest the lack of absolutes in American morality — the soft-peddling of the language of sin in favor of the language of "mistakes." Well, if Perry permitted and saw through the execution of an innocent man, would that be a mistake, or would that be a sin? If a mistake, it would put into question the morality of the Texas death penalty apparatus; if a sin, it would question the morality of Rick Perry. If a sin, it would fall to Perry, as a Christian, to confess it, and ask forgiveness for it. If a sin, and if Perry's Christianity is anything but a campaign promise, he would have to welcome a reckoning — or at least a public examination that would decide whether the sin in question was committed by the man he put to death or by the state he governs.
Rick Perry is a Christian. It does us no good to ask, as Christopher Hitchens did last week, if he really believes what he says he believes; better to take him at his word, for then we can hold him to it. That is, we can see if he's a Christian not only by word, but by deed — if he is Christian by the proclaimed standards of Christianity.
Of course, Perry is very much a Christian by word. He is not only a professing Christian; he is a professional Christian, whose profession of Christian faith at a mass prayer rally in Houston served as prelude to his presidential campaign. Now, there are Christians who might regard as repugnant a man engaging in public prayer for the purpose of indicating his designs on power, but the American evangelical Christians Perry was courting are not among them. These are Christians who have made their peace with power; who have made their peace with wealth; and who have made their peace with war — who have, indeed, adapted themselves to the needs of a belligerent nation as surely as their ancient ancestors made their peace, in the form of Catholicism, to the needs of Rome. American evangelical Christianity is a mutant form of Christianity, in the sense that it is an evolved form of Christianity, in the sense that it has exchanged the nearly impossible terms that Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount with terms that are much more favorable for aggressive growth and convenient for a healthy rate of return.
So it is no use applying the old "What Would Jesus Do?" standard to Rick Perry, for Perry belongs to a church that put aside that standard long ago. Would Jesus walk around in $2000 worth of hand-tooled boots? Would Jesus brag about jogging while "packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets?" Would Jesus balance his budget by cutting funds to education? Would Jesus reject all clams of science except the "science" of raising funds through patronage? These questions are absurd, not only because they're anachronistic, but also because they have nothing to do with American evangelical Christianity in theory or practice. Rick Perry can with clear conscience call himself a Christian because he has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and has as a consequence rejected the moral imperative of progressive taxation, the factual basis of evolution and global warming, and the extension of the Republican mantra of "personal freedom" into the realm of marriage. That the Jesus of the Gospels is notably forgiving in regard to sexual sins and notably unforgiving in regard to economic ones matters little; the Jesus of American evangelical Christianity has it the other way around, and that is the Jesus Rick Perry — along with millions of other Americans — has elected to follow.
Indeed, by the terms of the faith he professes, Perry might even be able to reconcile his Christianity with his enthusiastic application of the death penalty, despite the apparent contradiction of a religion created in emulation of history's most notable executionee giving its ultimate blessing to the executioner. After all, when American evangelical Christianity takes a New Testament position on the defense of "innocent" — i.e., unborn — life, it is reserving for itself the right to take an Old Testament position on the guilty kind, with the result that a religion that preaches from the pulpit against the expansion of state power in the form of Obamacare countenances it in the form of lethal injection. Although he has signed death warrants for 200 men; although like his predecessor in Austin he lacks the quality of mercy; although he has overruled even the rare recommendations of clemency from his hand-picked clemency board; although he is, on the face of it, that most un-Christian of things, a governor with a black hood, he can always say that he is following the biblical charge of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, and of fulfilling the law.
But what if he signed the death warrant for an innocent man? This is a biblical offense, no matter how you cut it. American evangelical Christians often protest the lack of absolutes in American morality — the soft-peddling of the language of sin in favor of the language of "mistakes." Well, if Perry permitted and saw through the execution of an innocent man, would that be a mistake, or would that be a sin? If a mistake, it would put into question the morality of the Texas death penalty apparatus; if a sin, it would question the morality of Rick Perry. If a sin, it would fall to Perry, as a Christian, to confess it, and ask forgiveness for it. If a sin, and if Perry's Christianity is anything but a campaign promise, he would have to welcome a reckoning — or at least a public examination that would decide whether the sin in question was committed by the man he put to death or by the state he governs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)