Marvin Wilson, a mentally retarded man with an I.Q. of 61, was executed by the state of Texas on Tuesday night, after the Supreme Court refused to accept the argument that the killing violated the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.â€
As the legal analyst Andrew Cohen explains on The Atlantic's Web site, the execution of a 54-year-old man “who could not handle money or navigate a phone book, a man who sucked his thumb and could not always tell the difference between left and right, a man who, as a child, could not match his socks, tie his shoes or button his clothes,†seemed to “directly contradict the spirit, if not the letter,†of a Supreme Court ruling in 2002 that appeared to bar the execution of mentally retarded inmates.
Mr. Wilson's lawyers argued that the court should intervene because Texas uses criteria to determine whether or not someone can be fairly classified as mentally retar ded that “lack any scientific foundation,†The Texas Tribune reported. As The Atlantic Wire notes, in a 2004 ruling that paved the way for Mr. Wilson's execution, a state court judge turned instead to literature, invoking John Steinbeck's “Of Mice and Men†to describe the difficulties of defining “that level and degree of mental retardation at which a consensus of Texas citizens would agree that a person should be exempted from the death penalty.â€
Upholding the state's right to execute a mentally impaired man named Jose Garcia Briseno despite the Supreme Court's prior ruling, a Texas appeals court observed in 2004:
Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt. But, does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental reta rdation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?
(The complete Briseno opinion was posted online by The Texas Tribune.)
After Thomas Steinbeck, the writer's son, read a Guardian article on how his father's novel had been used in a Texas court to argue for the execution of the mentally retarded, he joined the effort to halt the killing of Mr. Wilson The Beaumont Enterprise reported. In an outraged statement released on Tuesday, just before Mr. Wilson was put to death for a fatal shooting in 1992, Mr. Steinbeck wrote:
On behalf of the family of John Steinbeck, I am deeply troubled by today's scheduled execution of Marvin Wilson, a Texas man with an I.Q. of 61. Prior to reading about Mr. Wilson's case, I had no idea that the great state of Texas would use a fictional character that my father created to make a point about human loyalty and dedication, i.e. Lennie Small from “Of Mice and Men,†as a benchmark to identify wh ether defendants with intellectual disability should live or die.
My father was a highly gifted writer who won the Nobel prize for his ability to create art about the depth of the human experience and condition. His work was certainly not meant to be scientific, and the character of Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like intellectual disability. I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous, and profoundly tragic. I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way. And the last thing you ever wanted to do, was to make John Steinbeck angry.
In 1937, the novelist himself told The New York Times that the model for his character, a killer who did not comprehend his own actions, was shown leniency by the American legal system of the time. “Lennie was a real person,†Mr. Steinbeck said. “He's in an insane asylum in Calif ornia right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn't kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn't stop him until it was too late.â€
