POOR FELLOW HAS AN IQ OF ONLY 71 DUE TO AN ABUSIVE CHILDHOOD

Let me see if I can get this straight. According to his attorney, this poor fellow should not be executed because he is the real victim in this case. He has an IQ of only 71 that the attorney thinks is due to an abusive childhood. And according to his former common-law wife, when sad or angered he would roll into a fetal position and cry. Now that is really touching. Please give me a moment to compose myself.

Instead of executing the poor fellow, why don’t we just go ahead and kill the man that he stabbed 10 times? Oh shit, we can’t do that because the guy bled to death. By the way, I forgot to add one little detail – the poor fellow also had the misfortune of finding himself killing a second man by stabbing him 10-20 times. I wonder if he rolled into a fetal position and cried after that episode?

Let’s hope that on Tuesday the great State of Texas will be allowed to lower his IQ to zero!

Here are some excerpts from a Houston Chronicle report on the pending execution:

INMATE ‘WHO LIKED TO KILL’ SET FOR EXECUTION TUESDAY
Laborer set to die Tuesday for stabbing victim to death

By Allan Turner

Houston Chronicle
April 26, 2010

Early on the morning of Jan. 18, 1998, Samuel Bustamante and three friends cruised the dark streets around Rosenberg taverns looking for a victim to rob. Unsuccessful, they were preparing to abandon their quest when they spotted Rafael Alvarado, who, to his misfortune, was well-dressed and wore a seemingly valuable watch.

Alvarado, 27, offering to pay for a ride across town, joined Bustamante in the truck's bed.

Minutes later, Bustamante pounced, stabbing his victim 10 times. Mortally wounded, Alvarado fell from the vehicle. At daybreak, police followed a trail of blood from Rosenberg's west city limits to Alvarado's body in a roadside ditch. He still possessed his watch, gold chain and $100 in cash.

Bustamante, 40, an El Campo laborer, is set to be executed for the crime Tuesday. He would be the seventh killer executed in the state this year and the fourth from Fort Bend County since Texas resumed executions in 1982.

Bustamante's attorney, Philip Hilder, last week filed a state court appeal arguing that Bustmante, with an overall IQ of 71, is mildly mentally retarded and should be spared death under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins vs. Virginia. In that landmark decision the high court held that executing mentally retarded killers violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Hilder argued that Bustamante's abusive childhood might have been a factor in his retardation, and offered comments from the killer's former common-law wife that he had been childlike and unable to care for himself. When sad or angered, the woman told a Baylor College of Medicine clinical neuropsychologist, Bustamante would roll into a fetal position and cry.

“He liked to kill,” said Fort Bend County Assistant District Attorney Fred Felcman, who prosecuted Bustamante. “He talked about eviscerating women. … He liked to kill. He bragged about it.”

Shortly after his conviction in the Alvarado case, Bustamante was returned to a Wharton County courtroom where he pleaded guilty to murdering 60-year-old Lloyd Harold Turner, an El Campo homeless man.
Authorities contended that Bustamante and his brother, Bill Bustamante, targeted the man to “work out some aggravation.”

After killing a pregnant dog, the brothers stopped at a fast-food restaurant for hamburgers before targeting Turner, whose body later was found beneath a U.S. 59 overpass. Samuel Bustamante stabbed the man 10-20 times; his brother hit him with a baseball bat.