Fifth Circuit Court Stays Texas Execution Scheduled for Tonight

The Fifth Circuit Court
ruled today that Texas could not proceed with tonight’s
scheduled execution of Robert Campbell, who the state found to be
mentally retarded, because he was mentally incompetent, in line
with the 2002 Supreme Court decision on such executions. From a
statement by one of Campbell’s attorneys:

Mr. Campbell has been fully evaluated by a highly
qualified psychologist – a member of the Texas Board of Examiners
of Psychologists, appointed to that post by Governor Rick Perry –
who confirms he is a person with mental retardation. Therefore,
according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v.
Virginia, he is ineligible for the death penalty. Given the state’s
own role in creating the regrettable circumstances that led to the
Fifth Circuit’s decision today, the time is right for the State of
Texas to let go of its efforts to execute Mr. Campbell, and resolve
this case by reducing his sentence to life
imprisonment.

The successful appeal was
one of two pursued by Campbell; the other targeted the
controversy surrounding the drugs used in lethal injections, which
led to a
botched execution in Oklahoma last month. Texas won’t say where
it got the drugs it uses in its lethal injection from; many
pharmaceutical companies have moved to stop selling such drugs to
governments using them to execute people. Last week, Jacob Sullum

explained how the medicalization of executions sanitizes them
and helps maintain a level of public opinion support for the death
penalty.