In Texas, another execution, another miscarriage of justice

For two decades, the government failed to disclose evidence that a convicted murderer was mentally disabled

Execution chamber
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File))

While Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) continues to boost his national political ambitions by boasting about Texas' track record on the death penalty, state officials there are poised later today to execute an intellectually disabled man — a convicted murderer whose prosecutors failed to disclose key evidence of his disability for over a decade. (Update: the execution has been stayed. Scroll to the bottom for details.)

If the execution of Robert James Campbell proceeds as planned tonight, it won't just mean that Texas hid from view the results of long-ago cognitive testing that suggests the condemned man has been intellectually disabled his whole life. It also will mean that the state's judges, recently alerted to the delayed disclosure of this evidence, did nothing to remedy it. This is lawlessness disguised as law.

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Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and a legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News. He has covered the law and justice beat since 1997 and was the 2012 winner of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award for commentary.