It is unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded prisoners in the United States. The state of Texas, however, appears to have found a loophole, according to a published report.

Psychologist George Denkowski, an expert witness oft-used by Texas prosecutors, has been utilizing "junk science" to elevate the intelligence evaluation scores of mentally deficient death row prisoners, according to a new report in The Texas Observer.
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Texas Governor Rick Perry rejected a bill that would have established rules to determine who is mentally retarded. Left grasping, courts invented their own criteria, turning to psychologists for the complicated evaluations.

Having played a key part in two-thirds of the state's Atkins appeals, Dr. George Denkowski has built a lucrative practice off ensuring the mentally retarded are executed, his critics say. Denkowski's reputation for declaring prisoners fit to die has earned him "almost Dr. Death status," attorney Robert Morrow told reporter Reneé Feltz.

The attorney general materially changed his advice on the legality of military action against Iraq a few days before the invasion, the inquiry into the war was told today.

Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary at the time, who gave the inquiry unprecedented insights into how the Blair government took the country to war in 2003, said there were significant differences between the final legal opinion Lord Goldsmith presented to the cabinet, and an earlier version he gave privately to Tony Blair.

"It was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced 10 days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed," he said.
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That advice was never given to the cabinet, Turnbull said today. He said there was pressure from senior military figures and officials on Goldsmith.

A soon-to-be-published study has found that campaign contributions from corporations to judges are likely distorting the justice system and making it harder for ordinary citizens to win cases against corporations.

University of Illinois labor law professor Michael LeRoy examined the outcomes of 223 state court rulings on cases involving disputes between employers and employees. He found that where party-affiliated judges are elected, employees won 32.1 percent of cases, but where judges are appointed, or elected in non-partisan elections, employees won 52.7 percent of the time.

A former chief United Nations weapons inspector is accused of contacting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl in an Internet chat room, engaging in a sexual conversation and showing himself masturbating on a Web camera.

Scott Ritter of Delmar, N.Y., who served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and who was an outspoken critic of the second Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is accused of contacting what turned out to be a Barrett Township police officer posing undercover as a teen girl.