The US Court of Appeals in New Orleans has recently ruled a decision to stop the upcoming lethal execution of a death row prisoner in Texas. Bloomberg said that the court decision came two weeks after neighboring Oklahoma has botched an execution of a condemned prisoner.
Robert Campbell, who has been given a death sentence for a murder he committed in 1991, was supposedly set to be executed yesterday. The state appeals court had postponed the execution as Campbell's attorneys pursue their claim that the state reverse the death penalty as he is allegedly mentally disabled.
According to Campbell's lawyers, the prosecutors assigned in their client's case had withheld evidence of his poor results on standard intelligence tests improperly. They also claimed that one of the tests showed that Campbell had an intelligence quotient of 68. Citing a 2002 US Supreme Court decision, death penalty should not be imposed on individuals who are deemed intellectually disabled, Campbell's lawyers argued.
In an emailed statement, one of Campbell's attorneys, Robert Owen, said yesterday, "(Campbell's) lifelong mental retardation was not proven until new evidence, long hidden by prosecutors and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, very recently came to light."
Campbell was supposedly be the first death row prisoner to be executed following the unfortunate circumstances that led to the death of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett last month, Bloomberg said. Lockett was seen convulsing violently minutes after he was administered with the three-drug injection before dying of a massive heart attack. The state of Oklahoma has also postponed the scheduled lethal execution of another death row inmate, who was supposed to die two hours after Lockett, while an investigation on the botched investigation is under way.
The White House had since reacted to the botched execution, with President Barack Obama saying that Lockett's death was deeply troubling. Obama reportedly had asked the US Attorney General to conduct an analysis on what steps to avoid errors seen in Lockett's execution.
