By Nathan Bernier, KUT News
AUSTIN – A convicted killer who was scheduled to be put to death last night is still alive this morning. Robert Campbell’s attorneys are hoping they can keep him alive.
Less than three hours before James Campbell was to be strapped to a gurney and delivered a lethal dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution. The ruling said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice failed to hand over the results of an intelligence test they administered on Campbell that showed his IQ is below 70. Therefore, the court ruled, Campbell should have an opportunity to argue that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of his mental disability. A separate appeal demanding the state disclose the source of its pentobarbital is still pending before the US Supreme Court. But one of Campbell’s attorneys, Maurie Levin says both cases revolve around the issue of transparency.
MAURIE LEVIN: “…Because the state of Texas had been hiding information about the fact that Mr. Campbell was mentally retarded, so in that regard, there were some commonalities and a lack of transparency that we were talking about in the lethal injection litigation.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice had no comment on the ruling.
Campbell was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of Alexandra Rendon. She was a 20-year-old bank teller in Houston who was planning to get married. She was abducted while gassing up her car, and then robbed and raped before Campbell shot and killed her.
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