Death Penalty News

Tomas Gallo smiled and laughed as Harris County jurors decided his fate for the rape and murder of his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter.  Gallo had covered the girl's body with bruises and bite marks before sexually assaulting and bludgeoning her while her mother was at work just a few days before Christmas in 2001. He then cleaned up the blood-spattered bathroom, dressed the child in clean clothes and called her mother to say the girl was not breathing. Jurors agreed he should be sentenced to death, despite his lawyers' arguments that he was intellectually disabled. Now, however, Gallo and at least nine other death row inmates from across Texas - including five others from Harris County - are seeking to have their death sentences thrown out in exchange for life in prison under a ruling earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court that changed how Texas determines intellectual disability. Some, including Gallo, could eventually walk free, since life withou...

Scott Panetti was just hours from death on Nov. 29, 2014. Not because of some rare disease with an unpronounceable name but, sadly, because of a not-so-rare disease with a name that can strike terror in the heart of the patient’s loved ones: Paranoid schizophrenia. Inmate No. 999164, the other label by which Panetti goes, received the sentence of death in 1995 after murdering his in-laws during a psychotic episode. What makes his case newsworthy is not the heinousness of the killings, which they were, not the outlandish behavior of Panetti at trial, which it was, and not the multiple attempts to subpoena the pope, Jesus Christ and President John F. Kennedy, which he did, but the fact that his case progressed to within mere hours of his execution before the courts acknowledged that his consistently disturbing behaviors, over more than 19 years as a diagnosed schizophrenic, signaled that he may not have been competent to stand trial in the first place. Virtually every coun...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Texas man on death row who argued he was mentally disabled and could not be executed. In a 5-3 ruling, the court said the state's definition and standards for assessing intellectual disability "create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed." Those standards, known as the Briseno factors, take into account whether neighbors, teachers and friends think the person is intellectually disabled, makes plans or was impulsive, is a leader or a follower, responds in a rational way to situations, respond coherently to oral or written questions and can hide facts or lie to others in their own interest. In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said adjudications of intellectual disability should be informed by the views of medical experts. "Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disabilit...

Seventy years after its publication, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men* continues to stimulate debate, pro and con, about the death penalty. But justifying capital punishment was the last thing on the mind of the author, a liberal thinker who created the character of Lennie to increase our understanding of the mentally challenged and the American underclass. As a defense attorney who admires Of Mice and Men for this very reason, I’m angry that Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Cathy Cochran used Lennie in a 2004 legal opinion about imposing the death penalty when mental capacity is at issue. The “Lennie standard” she proposed continues to have consequences in the courts, and in the lives of the condemned. John Steinbeck’s late son Thom, an accomplished writer, was furious about Judge Cochran’s opinion after it was rendered. In a 2012 interview with the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise, Thom’s wife Gail Steinbeck, an attorney, said that “his ears turned red” when her husband fi...

The US state of Texas has come under fire for its use of a character from "Of Mice and Men" in determining if defendants are mentally ill. The so-called "Lennie Standard" has put several men on death row. In November, the United States Supreme Court will hear a case that might shock even those familiar with Texas' reputation for being hawkish when it comes to capital punishment. Although the court outlawed execution of the mentally incompetent in 2002, Texas has continued to use the murky legal definitions of sanity and disability to execute mentally ill prisoners. At the center of the upcoming "Moore versus Texas" is not only the state's reliance on outdated medical parameters, but the use of the so-called "Lennie Standard." This is the name Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Cathy Cochran gave "an unscientific seven-pronged test … based on the character Lennie Smalls from John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men,...

Texas Death Row, Livingston, Texas Terri Been was being interviewed by a reporter inside a Whataburger restaurant in East Texas on the afternoon of August 19 when the text came in: Her brother, Jeff Wood, on death row for his alleged involvement as an accomplice in the 1996 murder of his friend, and facing imminent execution, had been granted a stay. She read the text sent by Wood's attorney twice before dialing him up. "Are you serious?" she asked. It had been a long and emotionally taxing day: Been and her husband, her parents, Wood's daughter, and another friend had traveled to Huntsville, Texas, the location of the state's execution chamber, for the first of several 8-hour visits with Wood in anticipation that he would be executed sometime after 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 24. The news from the lawyer, Jared Tyler, was a serious relief. "I consider it a miracle," she told The Intercept. "He's stopped Texas from killing my brother....

Robert Ladd HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Texas man convicted of killing a 38-year-old woman nearly two decades ago while he was on parole for a triple slaying years earlier was executed Thursday evening. He was pronounced dead at 7:02 p.m. Robert Ladd, 57, received lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments he was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty. The court also rejected an appeal in which Ladd’s attorney challenged whether the pentobarbital Texas uses in executions is potent enough to not cause unconstitutional pain and suffering. Ladd was executed for the 1996 slaying of 38-year-old Vicki Ann Garner, of Tyler, who was strangled and beaten with a hammer. Her arms and legs were bound, bedding was placed between her legs, and she was set on fire in her apartment. Ladd came within hours of lethal injection in 2003 before a federal court agreed to hear evidence about juvenile records that suggested he was mentally impaired . That appea...

Robert Ladd Robert Ladd's lethal injection to come days after Georgia's execution of another intellectually disabled man; lawyer condemns policy based on fiction Texas is hours away from executing the second intellectually disabled prisoner in the US this week, in what lawyers say is a clear violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The convicted murderer Robert Ladd, 57, will be killed with a lethal injection at 6pm Central Time on Thursday barring last-minute action by the US supreme court, where the case now resides. He was first found to have what was then called "mental retardation" when he was 13, and has repeatedly been diagnosed with the condition throughout his life. In 2002, the supreme court banned executions for mentally impaired prisoners under the 8th amendment of the constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. But Texas says it is not bound by this ruling because it claims Ladd does...