Bobby Woods was sentenced to death for the murder of a little girl. His execution reopens debate on the death penalty for mentally retarded persons, forbidden since 2002 by the Supreme Court.
He had an IQ of 70 along with the reading and writing levels of a seven-year-old child. But, in 1997, the United States Supreme Court nonetheless considered Bobby Woods guilty of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old little girl and confirmed his death penalty. The 44-year-old man was executed by lethal injection Thursday night in the Huntsville prison in Texas.
His execution reopens debate on the death penalty for mentally retarded persons, forbidden since 2002 by the highest court in the United States. But the Court leaves it up to states themselves to define those who may be classified as mentally retarded.
Three appeals were lodged before the Supreme Court, requesting it to take into account the situation of this man who was incompetent to judge his own acts. To make things worse, he was defended since his conviction by a mediocre lawyer.
A Bad Defense
This lawyer, Maurie Levin, explained that he “distinguished himself by being one of only two lawyers ever excluded from the Bar of the Texas Court of Appeals” during one of Bobby’s appeals. “His lawyer did not correctly present the evidence of his mental difficulties,” affirmed the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in the United States in a statement.
According to the Texas Department of Justice, Bobby Woods had been sentenced to death by a jury in 1998 for the murder of his former girlfriend’s 11-year-old daughter during the previous year. He had broken in and violently hit her younger brother of nine, who survived, before raping her and slitting her throat.
Bobby Woods was the 24th person executed during 2009 in Texas, the American state that puts the most convicted persons to death, with 447 of 1,185 U.S. executions since the reestablishment of the death penalty in 1976. No other execution is scheduled in Texas before 2010.
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