Amnesty criticizes death penalty for Texas man previously considered retarded

Jul 5, 2002

 LONDON - Amnesty International criticized a Texas jury Friday for rejecting claims that a convicted rapist and murderer is retarded and sentencing him to death.

 John Paul Penry's lawyers say he has the mind of a 7-year-old, and the U.S. Supreme Court ( news - web sites) overturned his death sentence when it ruled last month that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional.

 But a jury determined on Wednesday that Penry was not retarded and sentenced him to die for the 1979 rape and murder of Pamela Moseley Carpenter at her home in Livingston, 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Houston.

 "Texas has achieved another milestone in its ugly history of judicial killing," Amnesty said.

 "It is just two weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of people with mental retardation violates contemporary standards of decency," the London-based human rights group said.

 "Texas has responded by showing that it will continue to err on the side of the indecent."

 "Texas has been pursuing the execution of John Penry for over two decades," the group's statement continued. "It is difficult to view the state's apparent need to kill this man as anything but vengeance."