Will Rick Perry Execute A Mentally Disabled Man Tonight? | Mother Jones
Four months after his 18th birthday, Campbell commit three armed car jackings. In one of those, a 20-year-old bank employee, Alexandra Rendon, was kidnapped at a gas station, sexually assaulted and shot to death. Campbell was quickly arrested, largely because he drove Rendon's car around his neighborhood, gave her coat to his mother and her jewelry to his girlfriend as gifts, and basically blabbed to everyone that he'd been involved in the crime. He wasn't alone during the commission of the crime. But his co-defendant, Leroy Lewis, was allowed to plead guilty and is already out on parole.
But Campbell, who is black, went to trial in 1992 in Houston during a time when prosecutors there werethree times more likely to pursue a capital case against African-American men than against white men. He had an incompetent lawyer whose many missteps included failing to either investigate his case or to present evidence that would have mitigated his sentence, notably the fact that Campbell was mentally retarded. (This term generally isn't used anymore to describe people with intellectual disabilities—except with regard to the death penalty, where it has a specific definition in the law.)
More bad lawyering over the years, along with hostile Texas courts, left Campbell without many avenues to appeal, even though in 2002, the US Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally disabled. What's more, Campbell's lawyers only recently discovered that prosecutors and other state officials long had substantial evidence of his limited cognitive functioning—including school records and test results placing his IQ at 68—that should have spared him from the death penalty. Yet they failed to turn it over to defense counsel until just days before his scheduled execution. Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nonetheless denied Campbell's request to stay the execution, despite clear concerns from several judges on the court that his claims of mental retardation were compelling and justified further review.
“It is an outrage that the State of Texas itself has worked to frustrate Mr. Campbell’s attempts to obtain any fair consideration of evidence of his intellectual disability,” said Robert C. Owen, an attorney for Mr. Campbell. “State officials affirmatively misled Mr. Campbell’s lawyers when they said they had no records of IQ testing of Mr. Campbell from his time on death row. That was a lie. They had such test results, and those results placed Mr. Campbell squarely in the range for a diagnosis of mental retardation. Mr. Campbell now faces execution as a direct result of such shameful gamesmanship.”
Four months after his 18th birthday, Campbell commit three armed car jackings. In one of those, a 20-year-old bank employee, Alexandra Rendon, was kidnapped at a gas station, sexually assaulted and shot to death. Campbell was quickly arrested, largely because he drove Rendon's car around his neighborhood, gave her coat to his mother and her jewelry to his girlfriend as gifts, and basically blabbed to everyone that he'd been involved in the crime. He wasn't alone during the commission of the crime. But his co-defendant, Leroy Lewis, was allowed to plead guilty and is already out on parole.
But Campbell, who is black, went to trial in 1992 in Houston during a time when prosecutors there werethree times more likely to pursue a capital case against African-American men than against white men. He had an incompetent lawyer whose many missteps included failing to either investigate his case or to present evidence that would have mitigated his sentence, notably the fact that Campbell was mentally retarded. (This term generally isn't used anymore to describe people with intellectual disabilities—except with regard to the death penalty, where it has a specific definition in the law.)
More bad lawyering over the years, along with hostile Texas courts, left Campbell without many avenues to appeal, even though in 2002, the US Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally disabled. What's more, Campbell's lawyers only recently discovered that prosecutors and other state officials long had substantial evidence of his limited cognitive functioning—including school records and test results placing his IQ at 68—that should have spared him from the death penalty. Yet they failed to turn it over to defense counsel until just days before his scheduled execution. Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nonetheless denied Campbell's request to stay the execution, despite clear concerns from several judges on the court that his claims of mental retardation were compelling and justified further review.
“It is an outrage that the State of Texas itself has worked to frustrate Mr. Campbell’s attempts to obtain any fair consideration of evidence of his intellectual disability,” said Robert C. Owen, an attorney for Mr. Campbell. “State officials affirmatively misled Mr. Campbell’s lawyers when they said they had no records of IQ testing of Mr. Campbell from his time on death row. That was a lie. They had such test results, and those results placed Mr. Campbell squarely in the range for a diagnosis of mental retardation. Mr. Campbell now faces execution as a direct result of such shameful gamesmanship.”
