HOUSTON — A Texas man described as intellectually disabled by his lawyers faced execution on Wednesday for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.
Arthur Lee Burton was condemned for the July 1997 killing of Nancy Adleman. The 48-year-old mother of three was beaten and strangled with her own shoelace in a heavily wooded area off a jogging trail along a bayou, police said. According to authorities, Burton confessed to killing Adleman, saying “she asked me why was I doing it and that I didn’t have to do it.” Burton recanted this confession at trial.
Burton, now 54, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
About five hours before Burton's scheduled injection, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a defense request to stop the execution. Lower courts had previously rejected the inmate's petition for a stay.
Burton's lawyers had argued that reports by two experts as well as a review of records show Burton “exhibited low scores on tests of learning, reasoning, comprehending complex ideas, problem solving, and suggestibility, all of which are examples of significant limitations in intellectual functioning.”
Records show Burton scored “significantly below” grade level on standardized testing and had difficulty performing daily activities like cooking and cleaning, according to the petition.
“This court’s intervention is urgently needed to prevent the imminent execution of Mr. Burton, who the unrebutted evidence strongly indicates is intellectually disabled and therefore categorically exempt from the death penalty,” Burton’s lawyers wrote.
The Supreme Court in 2002 had barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.
Prosecutors say Burton has not previously raised claims he is intellectually disabled and waited until eight days before his scheduled execution to do so.
An expert for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Burton, said in an Aug. 1 report that Burton’s writing and reading abilities “fall generally at or higher than the average U.S. citizen, which is inconsistent with” intellectual disability.
“I have not seen any mental health or other notations that Mr. Burton suffers from a significant deficit in intellectual or mental capabilities,” according to the report by Thomas Guilmette, a psychology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.
Burton was convicted in 1998 but his death sentence was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000. He received another death sentence at a new punishment trial in 2002.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Burton’s lawyers accused the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals of rejecting their claims of intellectual disability because of “hostility” toward prior Supreme Court rulings that criticized the state’s rules on determining intellectual disability.
In a February 2019 ruling regarding another death row inmate, the Supreme Court said the Texas appeals court was continuing to rely on factors that have no grounding in prevailing medical practice.
In a July concurring order denying an intellectual disability claim for another death row inmate, four justices from the Texas appeals court suggested that the standards now used by clinicians and researchers “could also be the result of bias against the death penalty on the part of those who dictate the standards for intellectual disability.”
In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office denied that the state appeals court was refusing to adhere to current criteria for determining intellectual disability.
Burton would be the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 11th in the U.S.
On Thursday, Taberon Dave Honie is scheduled to be the first inmate executed in Utah since 2010. He was condemned for the 1998 killing of his girlfriend’s mother.