Marvin Wilson was a mentally retarded man given the death penalty for murder despite the fact that it’s unclear whether he understood what he was doing or even that his confession that he did it was real, given that he supposedly confessed his culpability to the girlfriend of the victim, not to some dispassionate third party. It would seem that this conviction would be a slam dunk to have overturned upon appeal, even in Texas, which loves, loves I say, killing people, why, just the very thought of killing people makes the little soldiers of Texans stand up and downright salute yessirree! And if the following was Marvin Wilson’s picture, that probably would be true:
But of course that picture of a quite obviously mentally retarded man, a quite obviously mentally retarded white man, is *not* Marvin Wilson’s picture. Instead, Marvin Wilson looked like this:
I.e., he looked like a scary thug black man, not like some obviously mentally retarded white guy. And in Texas, that’s end of game. Way Texicans figure it, if it’s a scary thug black guy, it doesn’t matter whether he did the crime or not, just kill him, already. Alrighty, then!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin