AUSTIN, Texas | Tue Aug 7, 2012 8:11pm EDT
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas executed convicted murderer Marvin Wilson, who had been diagnosed as mentally retarded, on Tuesday after the Supreme Court refused to intervene a decade after banning executions of such people as cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, 54, was convicted of murder for the November 1992 killing of a 21-year-old police drug informant, Jerry Robert Williams, and was sentenced to death in April 1994.
He was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. local time, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Wilson's IQ had been measured as low as 61, below the 70 level sometimes used to delineate mental retardation. Texas argued that the test pegging Wilson's IQ at 61 was conducted by an inexperienced intern, and that several other tests showed an IQ above 70.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas executed convicted murderer Marvin Wilson, who had been diagnosed as mentally retarded, on Tuesday after the Supreme Court refused to intervene a decade after banning executions of such people as cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, 54, was convicted of murder for the November 1992 killing of a 21-year-old police drug informant, Jerry Robert Williams, and was sentenced to death in April 1994.
He was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. local time, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Wilson's IQ had been measured as low as 61, below the 70 level sometimes used to delineate mental retardation. Texas argued that the test pegging Wilson's IQ at 61 was conducted by an inexperienced intern, and that several other tests showed an IQ above 70.