Intellectual disability claim delays execution

A Texas appeals court has delayed a second execution this year to review claims that an inmate is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted a request by attorneys for Edward Lee Busby to stay his execution, which had been scheduled for Feb. 10.

Busby’s attorneys have argued he has shown “significant limitations in intellectual functioning.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, but it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.

Busby’s execution would have been the first in the state this year after the appeals court last month delayed the Jan. 21 lethal injection of Blaine Milam to review his intellectual disability claims.

Busby, 48, was condemned for the 2004 suffocation of a retired 77-year-old college professor abducted in Fort Worth. His body was later recovered in Oklahoma.