Texas Executes Mentally Handicapped Man After U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Appeal
Submitted on June 22, 2011
By Kate Randall - 22 June 2011
Milton Mathis, 32, was executed Tuesday evening at the Huntsville prison in Texas...The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Mathis’s attorneys for a reprieve. His defense team had argued that his execution violated the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment due to Mathis’s mental retardation...In addition to executing the mentally retarded, people suffering from varying types of mental illness have been put to death.
