It was very unfortunate. We didn't feel like it would have cost a lot of money. A bill by Houston state Senator Rodney Ellis to ban the execution of mentally retarded capital murderers met the same fate as Maxey's bill. The legislation would have outlawed the death penalty for any defendant with an IQ of 65 or less. The bill made it out of the Senate but ultimately died.
Legislative sources say it was crushed by the governor's office.
Ellis's bill would not have helped death row inmate Larry Robison, who suffers from schizophrenia, not mental retardation. Still, Lois Robison feels that the system failed her son. In the summer of 1982, Lois tried desperately to have Larry placed in a mental hospital because of his increasingly strange behavior. He thought people were trying to kill him. Each time, she says, doctors and administrators told her they couldn't help until Larry actually did something violent.