After serving a third of his sentence for a brutal murder of a Dallas woman and her two children, Robert Ladd was released on parole. He narrowly avoided the death penalty after courts learned that his IQ was below 70. The AP writes:

They cite a psychiatrist’s determination that Ladd, then a 13-year-old in custody of the Texas Youth Commission, had an IQ of only 67. Courts have embraced scientific studies that consider an IQ of 70 a threshold for impairment, and the Supreme Court has barred execution of mentally impaired people.

Despite the clear indication that Ladd was not mentally stable and the fact that he likely served as a danger to himself and/or to others, they just let him go.

Four years later, Ladd was arrested again, this time for an equal brutal murder of a mentally impaired woman in East Texas. Like the first murder, the body was left inside a burning apartment.

Now, Ladd is again facing the death penalty and it’s very unlikely that his appeals will be heard this time around. Nevermind the fact that he should have never been released from prison in the first place. Nevermind the fact that it’s the justice systems failure to properly handle the case of a man with obvious and severe mental issues.

Texas Assistant Attorney General disagrees with the ACLU’s request to rely on science and medicine when making their decision:

Assistant Attorney General Kelli Weaver told the court that his claim that he’s mentally impaired “has been repeatedly rejected and he argues neither a new factual basis nor a new legal basis on which the judgments of the state and federal courts should be questioned.”

So a person who previously tested with a low IQ in their teens, who goes on to commit two similarly gruesome murders, doesn’t meet the threshold for mental impairment?

What about people who repeatedly decide that others should be killed strictly based on revenge and political gain?