Execution halted; lawyer says FW man is retarded

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday stayed the execution of a 41-year-old Fort Worth murderer after his attorney argued that the man is retarded.

Elkie Lee Taylor, 41, a former laborer, had been scheduled to die Thursday for using a coat hanger to strangle retiree Otis Flake, 64, to death in 1993 in Fort Worth.

Mr. Taylor and an accomplice robbed the man's home of a television, pots, pans, dishes and other items. Officials said they later sold the items for about $16.

At trial, prosecutors also presented evidence of a similar slaying they said Mr. Taylor committed.

In 1992, Mr. Taylor was sentenced to eight years in prison for a Tarrant County burglary. He was paroled in January 1993.

"When he was in prison for a prior, they tested him and determined him to be mentally retarded," said James Rasmussen, a Wichita Falls attorney handling Mr. Taylor's appeal.

The test showed his IQ as 63, Mr. Rasmussen said. The benchmark for retardation recognized by mental health professionals is 70. A second prison test showed his IQ as 57, Mr. Rasmussen said.

The fact that the tests were performed before the slaying "makes the evidence more reliable," Mr. Rasmussen said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that executing the mentally retarded violates the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Terri Moore, who prosecuted Mr. Taylor in Tarrant County in 1994, said Tuesday that evidence of possible mental retardation was presented during Mr. Taylor's trial but jurors dismissed it.

A Tarrant County court will conduct a hearing to determine whether Mr. Taylor is retarded. If he is classified as retarded, his death sentence will be commuted to life in prison.

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Yep. For those that may not have seen this yet...

Knowing Right from Wrong
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2001-03-08/feature.html/1/index.html

Excerpt from this John Paul Penry article:

While Penry made sure no one was coming, Carpenter grabbed the pair of orange-handled scissors she had been using to make Halloween decorations and stabbed them into Penry's back. Penry then knocked the scissors out of her hand and pushed her to the floor. While she was on her way down, Penry whacked Carpenter's head on the stove. As she lay on the kitchen floor, Penry then stomped her with his work boots.

"We verified that later, because she had a perfect heel print on her side where he'd stomped her while she was on her stomach. It ruptured her kidney, and that's what actually killed her."

But Carpenter wasn't dead yet, nor was Penry through. After stomping her, he got down on the floor and raped her.

"Then he got up and went across the room and picked up those damn scissors," says Price. "Came back, sat down on her stomach and said, 'I'm sorry, but I've got to do this.' Said something about he couldn't have her squealing on him. And then he buried the scissors in her chest." That act, says Price, was a clear indication that Penry knew he had done something wrong and that he was in big trouble.

Even then, the notoriously strong-willed Carpenter refused to die.

"He thought that would kill her instantly," says Price, "but she reached up and pulled the goddamn scissors out. When she did that, it scared him and he jumped up and ran out of the house."

Carpenter managed to pull herself across the room to the telephone. First she called a friend, and then an ambulance. At the hospital, emergency room doctors were aware of only the stab wound. They mended the hole in Carpenter's chest and thought they had her stabilized. But when a catheter was inserted, her damaged kidney began hemorrhaging. Pam Carpenter immediately went into shock and died.

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