Executing ‘Children’

Texas Gov. Rick Perry did what was politically expedient Sunday when he vetoed a bill that would have banned the execution of mentally retarded felons. Politicians rarely lose by being ever tougher on crime. So what’s next? Which pandering governor will be the first to lethally inject a chronological 8-year-old, rather than someone who merely has the IQ of a child?

What’s needed is a national standard. The execution of the mentally impaired is cruel and unusual punishment, morally inhumane and a violation of the 8th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court will have the opportunity to say just that in a case it hears this fall. Perry’s veto Sunday should put even more pressure on the justices to do so.

Texas-style justice under Gov. George W. Bush richly deserved the bad rap it got in the run-up to last fall’s presidential election. Once Bush moved to the White House, the Texas Legislature passed reforms, including the ban on executing retarded felons. The measure was similar to those signed into law in Florida and Arizona in recent months. It holds retarded defendants accountable for their crimes but specifies a life term without parole. Thirteen other states and the federal government already bar such executions. A bill to do the same in California is stalled in the Assembly. But unlike in Texas, jurors here are specifically instructed to consider evidence of the defendant’s “mental disease or defect” as a reason to spare his or her life.

Like Bush, Perry continues to insist that Texas does not execute the mentally retarded and in so doing reveals that he, like Bush, misunderstands or disagrees with the accepted definition of mental retardation, one centered on an IQ score below 70. Instead, both Bush and Perry have indicated that if a jury decides that a defendant has the skills to manipulate and deceive, it can sentence him to death despite a low IQ.

The Supreme Court should end this shameful practice. Earlier this month, the high court overturned the death sentence of a Texas inmate with the mental capacity of a 6-year-old on the grounds that jurors did not adequately consider his mental retardation as a reason to spare his life. This fall the court will hear a North Carolina case to decide whether executing a person who is retarded violates basic standards of decency. We believe it does.