Inmate missing 8 percent of his brain is executed; SCOTUS denies stay in divided order
A brain-damaged Missouri inmate was executed on Tuesday after a divided U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay.
Four justices would have granted a stay for the 74-year-old inmate, Cecil Clayton, report the Washington Post and St. Louis Public Radio. They are Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, according to this order (PDF).
Clayton’s lawyers had argued brain damage linked to a sawmill accident made Clayton unable to understand the significance of his execution. He had an IQ of 71 and believed God would rescue him at the last minute, “after which time he will travel the country playing the piano and preaching the gospel,” the lawyers said.
Surgeons removed about 8 percent of Clayton’s brain, including about a fifth of the frontal lobe governing impulse control and judgment, after a piece of wood shot through Clayton’s skull in a sawmill accident in 1972. He was sentenced to death for killing a sheriff’s deputy in 1996.
Only one drug—pentobarbital—was used to execute Clayton. Officials said Clayton was pronounced dead less than 10 minutes after the execution began.
