Texas Inmate Cites Brain Science in SCOTUS Execution Fight

Billy Joe Wardlow shot and killed an 82-year-old man when he was 18. But he says the fact that his brain was still developing at the time should bar his execution and, by implication, more than 40 others, too.

A 2005 Supreme Court case outlawed the death penalty for defendants who killed when they were 17 or younger. At first glance, that wouldn’t seem to help Wardlow.

But, facing a July 8 execution, the Texas death row prisoner cites that precedent plus more recent scientific evidence to argue the state’s unique system, which requires findings of “future dangerousness” to impose ...