(AP) — A Texas appeals court has delayed what would have been the first execution scheduled in the state this year.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday granted the stay for 31-year-old Blaine Milam to review claims he is intellectually disabled. He had been set for lethal injection on Thursday for killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter during what the couple said was part of an “exorcism” in 2008 in Rusk County in East Texas.
Milam’s attorneys say three of four experts who examined him determined Milam is intellectually disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred executing the intellectually disabled.
