Court Stays Execution of Mentally Retarded Man
TEXAS
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The Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to a mentally retarded Texas man just hours before he was due to be put to death by lethal injection for murdering a service station clerk.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said the stay granted to Willie Moddon, 54, would remain in force until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of executing mentally retarded killers. The court is considering a case in which Virginia sentenced a mentally retarded man to death.
Moddon stabbed a woman to death in Lufkin in 1984.
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