Loughner Found Competent, Pleads Guilty to Avoid Death Penalty

I won't say anything political, but it certainly would have been interesting to see how enthusiastic Arizona would have been about pushing for the death penalty if the intended target had been one of their other high-profile politicians.

 

You know what they call someone with an IQ of 61 in Texas?

Doctor.

 

Before they unplugged Old Sparky, they called him a conductor.

 

I'm also not particularly enthused about the idea of forcibly medicating someone to enable the government to lock him up, and certainly not to enable his execution.

 

I get that, but I don't think there were any great options here. Without the medication he was hiding under a blanket in his cell and yelling incoherently. I don't think that's the more humane option.

Also, it was forced at first. He apparently now takes it voluntarily.

 

Uh, no ... They put to death a guy whose attorneys, on appeal, claimed he had an IQ of 61. From the AP story:

I'm no arch death penalty supporter, but one would think a board full of journalists (or journalist types) might be inclined to grasp the facts a bit more firmly.

 

I would if I had read that. All I read about was his score of 61.

 

You're on much firmer ground when you use a fictional character to justify a decision to execute someone.

 

How much higher can his IQ be? Did the state quantify a number? Even an IQ in the lower 70s is pushing it, but we know most Texans have no problems with killing in the name of Texas justice, even if they kill those who are mentally impaired.

 

I'm not arguing for or against this particular execution. But it drives me crazy when assertions begin to be thrown around as a fact. Of course his attorneys are going to claim that he was mentally impaired. That's their job, to do all they can for their client. Yet their claims do not rise to the level of fact. Even if you stipulate that he scored 61 on a given assessment, there is substantial measurement variance in those tests (i.e., you don't get the same score every time). Further, I don't know how one teases out the true score from that you would get if the subject's life wasn't hanging in the balance. I suspect the courts dealt with this issue in varying degrees in this case, as they would in any death-penalty case across the country.

And, by the way, I also don't agree that it's a fact that "most Texas have no problems with killing in the name of Texas justice, even if they kill those who are mentally impaired." That's an awfully broad brush with which you paint.

 

Yeah, the standard is not a particular number. It's "did you know what you were doing at the time was wrong?" Pretty subjective, but that gives judges and courts a lot of leeway. If you are going to have a death penalty on the books, no one should be immune.

 

So you'd be good with executing 13-year-olds, who can be expected to know right from wrong?

Are you sure your name shouldn't be Mark1910, or possibly Mark1810? You'd fit in a lot better.