Texas Set to Resume Executions After Delay During Pandemic
Source: Time
BY JUAN A. LOZANO / AP JULY 8, 2020 1:18 AM EDT
(HOUSTON) — A Texas death row inmate condemned for fatally shooting an 82-year-old man nearly three decades ago was scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday, as the nation’s busiest death penalty state prepared to resume executions following a five-month delay during the coronavirus pandemic.
Prosecutors say Billy Joe Wardlow killed Carl Cole during a June 1993 robbery at his home in Cason, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) east of Dallas in the East Texas piney woods, near the Louisiana and Arkansas borders.
Wardlow was 18 at the time of the slaying, and his attorneys have argued that one of the issues Texas jurors have to determine before imposing a death sentence — whether a defendant will be a future danger — can’t be reliably made for people younger than 21 because scientific research has shown their brains are still developing. Wardlow’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution, saying he committed a “poorly-thought-out and naively-motivated robbery” to steal a truck so he could run away with his girlfriend.
“The science really supports precluding the death penalty for anyone under 21 because brain development is still happening,” said Richard Burr, one of Wardlow’s attorneys.
Read more: https://time.com/5864050/texas-executions-coronavirus/