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May 8, 2020

Yet another Texas execution postponed, though purportedly not for COVID reasons

Texas had an execution scheduled for next Wednesday, but no longer as explained in this local article: "An East Texas man who asserts that he is intellectually disabled has won a reprieve from his execution scheduled for next week for a 2007 shootout that left two sheriff’s officers dead." Here is more:

Randall Wayne Mays was set to receive lethal injection May 13 for the shootings at his Henderson County home.  In an order issued Thursday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an execution stay and remanded Mays’ case to the trial court in Henderson County for review of his intellectual-disability claim.

Mays’ attorneys say the 60-year-old suffers from delusions and thinks Texas wants to execute him over a renewable energy design he believes he created....  Mays had previously won reprieves in October and in 2015.

Six other executions scheduled in Texas for earlier this year have been postponed because of the novel coronavirus outbreak statewide.  Besides Mays' intellectual-disability claim, his attorneys had also asked the appeals court for an execution stay because of the pandemic. The appeals court did not address that request in its order.

The next execution in Texas is scheduled for June 16.

Though this reprieve was not based on the COVID pandemic, I wonder if the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was just a little bit more willing to grant the defendant his requested relief because of the many challenges posed to courts and corrections officials these days. I suspect that, even when courts and litigants do not make express reference to COVID concerns, they still cannot help but look at all criminal justice issues through a somewhat different lens.

With Texas starting to open up, it will be especially interesting to see if the state's two scheduled excutions for mid June and early July go forward. And, in the meantime, Missouri has an execution schedule for May 19, and it seems that the state is seriously prepared to move forward (see, e.g., press reports from Mother Jones and the St. Louis Dispatch).

Some prior related capital COVID posts:

May 8, 2020 at 12:51 PM | Permalink

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