MJP –
On Wednesday, a Texan on death row will be killed for the 1997 murder of a Houston woman. With four more scheduled for 2024, if everything goes through as planned, Arthur Lee Burton would join two other inmates executed in the state this year.
The first death sentence handed down to Burton for the murder of Nancy Adleman came in 1998. Near a bayou jogging track, in a wooded area, was where her body was found by the police. Her shoelace was used to strangle her, and she was also assaulted severely. Keeping her underwear and shorts separate from her was the finding, according to The Texas Tribune.
Despite his subsequent confession, the man has maintained that he was coerced into making the statement, suggesting that he had denied killing Adleman at first. Even as of Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court is still considering Burton’s most recent appeal, which follows multiple unsuccessful attempts. He is not eligible for the death penalty, according to his attorneys, because he has an intellectual disability.
The additional proof of the condition that his attorneys have submitted includes a clinical psychologist’s determination that Burton satisfies the requirements for “mild intellectual disability,” along with supporting statistics. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that defines the death penalty as “cruel and unusual punishment” when applied to those with intellectual disabilities.
A three-judge panel of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, dismissed Burton’s claim, stating that “qualitative and quantitative evidence are not consistent with the presence of intellectual disability.” They went on to say that the appeal should have been made years ago since it was not timely. The claim was likewise denied by an appeals court in Texas.
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The legal team representing Burton has taken the case to the United States Supreme Court to get a new opinion and prevent his execution. The decision would be the second in less than a month to be made on the day of an execution if approved.
The execution of Ruben Gutiérrez, who was convicted of killing an 85-year-old lady in Brownsville in 1998, was postponed on July 16 by the Supreme Court.
The decision was announced right before the execution was scheduled to begin, just minutes before the hour. It decided to suspend it “pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari,” which is the formal way of saying that it wants a higher court to look at the matter after a lower court tried it.
The stay will be automatically lifted if the petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. The stay will end when the decision of this court is sent down, according to the document, if the writ of certiorari petition is approved.
