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Thursday, 16 November, 2000, 21:45 GMT
Court orders Texas execution delay
![]() Texas: Record number of executions
The United States Supreme Court has ordered the Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate George W Bush to delay the execution of Johnny Paul Penry.
Mr Penry, 44, was scheduled for execution at 1800 on Thursday (0000GMT), and would have been the third prisoner to be executed in as many days in Texas and the 38th this year - a US record.
Mr Penry's supporters have said he has the mental understanding of a seven-year-old. Prosecutors insist he is a sociopath pretending to be retarded. The court said it wanted more time to decide whether to hear arguments that Mr Penry's mental deficiency was not properly explained to the jury - but did not say how long a delay it was ordering. Texas is set to overtake its own record of 37 executions in one year, the highest number in any US state since records began in 1930. Groups including human rights group Amnesty International and the American Association on Mental Retardation have taken up his case, along with a mass-circulation British newspaper and German parliamentary leaders.
But a spokeswoman for Mr Bush said he was thoroughly informed of the case and would not decide until all legal appeals had been exhausted. Foreign criticism The case has provoked international interest, with the British tabloid newspaper The Mirror devoting no less than seven pages to what it calls "The Texas Massacre".
The paper says the Texas governor usually takes less than quarter of an hour to consider final appeals and often opts for shorter briefings from his aides, sometimes taking just four minutes, to decide to go ahead with executions. "Do we really want a man like him making snap decisions on whether to drop bombs or go to war. Do we really want his finger on the big trigger?" the paper asks.
Apparently as an assumed foregone conclusion, the Mirror's list includes John Penry as Number 150 whose 21 years on death row for the rape and murder of 22-year-old Pamela Carpenter in 1979 had been due to end in his execution on Thursday. But while The Mirror might be the most outspoken of the voices raised in defence of Penry's life, it is not the only one. The parliamentary party of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has written to Mr Bush, expressing its "deepest concerns" about the punishment. Anti-death penalty organisation Amnesty International, also protested against the execution. "If it goes ahead, his execution will fly in the face of long-held international standards of justice and decency," said Anne James of Amnesty International's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. Texas' record If he is executed, Johnny Paul Penry would not be the first allegedly mentally retarded inmate to receive the death penalty in Texas this year.
On Wednesday night, Tony Chambers was executed for the sexual assault and murder of an 11-year-old girl. The day before, Stacey Lawton was put to death for killing a man during a burglary in 1992. At least three other executions are scheduled in Texas for next month. The BBC's Valerie Jones in Texas says that US public opinion is more divided over the issue of the death penalty than the increasing number of executions might suggest.
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