Robert Ladd - A 57-year-old inmate on death row, who was originally sentenced to death in 1997, has finally been executed despite several attempts by his legal team to prove that he is mentally unfit.
Robert Ladd was given a lethal pentobarbital injection on Thursday evening; only hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Ladd's legal team to prove that his mental disabilities should exempt him from execution.
Robert Ladd was convicted for murdering 38-year-old Vickie Ann Gardner in Sept. 1996. At the time, he was on parole for the murder of a Dallas woman - Vivian Thompson - and her two children - Latoya and Maurice - in Oct. 1978. Ladd had served about 16 years of his 40-year prison sentence when he was rearrested.
Investigators say Ladd attacked and raped Gardner, before pounding her to death with a hammer and then setting her body on fire. Ladd was arrested a few days after Gardner's murder, when officials traced stolen items from her property to him. He had reportedly exchanged the items for rocks of crack cocaine.
Ladd's legal representatives repeatedly sought a habeas corpus after he was sentenced, claiming that he has been diagnosed to have an IQ that is below the threshold for impairment. Ladd's legal team also questioned the potency of the lethal injection used in the state; whether it led to suffering before death.
Although he got a nod for his habeas corpus 2003, the Court of Criminal Appeals later dismissed the case as an abuse of the writ. Under Texas law, the degree of an inmate's mental disability is matched against that of a mentlly unstable character in John Steinbeck's 1937 classic novel Of Mice And Men.
In Dec. Ladd wrote an open letter to Gawker in which he sought to plead his case for insanity. He also noted that he hadn't seen his lawyer in about 10 years before he was informed in last year that an execution date had been set for him.
Meanwhile, following his execution, Ladd's legal representative has criticized the use of a fictional character as a standard, instead of scientific evidence, to determine the level of mental impairment of an inmate. He also noted that the execution of Ladd violates the provisions of the Supreme Court, which outlaws the execution of mentally retarded persons.
Several organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have also criticized the execution of Ladd. A statement from ACLU said "His death is yet another example of how capital punishment routinely defies the rules of law and human decency."
Ladd was pronounced dead at approximately 7:02 p.m. on Thursday. He reportedly apologized to the family of Gardner before he was killed, telling them that he hoped they find peace.
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