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Texas Execution

By standdown

Texas is scheduled to carry out its 14th execution of 2009, tonight in Huntsville.  It would be the state's 437th execution since 1982.  Texas has far and away the most active death chamber in America, accounting for more than 37% of the nation's executions.  AP has this report on the scheduled execution of Derrick Johnson, via the Dallas Morning News. Lawyers for Johnson went to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the punishment, contending Johnson was mentally disabled and ineligible for execution under high court guidelines. In their appeals, attorneys argued Johnson's sentence should be commuted to life, that he was the product of a difficult childhood where both his parents were imprisoned for drug convictions, that he was beaten by relatives who raised him, that he had a history of school suspensions and expulsions beginning with the sixth grade and that IQ testing put him within the range of what the courts have defined as mental retardation...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).