Texas carries out execution

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A man convicted of killing a police informant was executed Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that he was too mentally impaired to qualify for the death penalty.

Marvin Wilson, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m., 14 minutes after his lethal injection began at the state prison in Huntsville.

Wilson’s attorneys had argued that he should have been ineligible for capital punishment because of his low IQ. In their appeal to the high court, his attorneys pointed to a psychological test conducted in 2004 that pegged Wilson’s IQ at 61, below the generally accepted minimum competency standard of 70.

But lower courts agreed with state attorneys, who argued that Wilson’s claim was based on a single test that may have been faulty and that his impairment claim wasn’t supported by other tests and assessments.