This program is made possible by the members and donors to the show. For details visit the

Contribute tab at BestOfTheLifetime.com. Welcome to the award-winning BestOfTheLifetime

podcast with clips today from La Show, the majority report, the David Pakman show, one

for ten films, all in with Chris Hayes, Tess Tube, The Rachel Maddo show, Democracy Now,

the Young Turks. Who really are the third-world men who are the barbarians? Well, we

here in the United States, twice this week, executed mentally impaired prisoners, despite

court rulings that say, don't do that. Texas executed an intellectually disabled prisoner.

This week Robert Ladd died by lethal injection, under Texas's unique and widely ridiculed

definition of intellectual disability according to the Guardian. He was deemed capable of being

executed because he did not match the degree of mental impairment depicted in a character

and a John Steinbeck novel. Who says fiction isn't relevant anymore? In final statement,

Ladd addressed the sister of his victim by name telling her he was really, really sorry.

A revenge death won't get you anything. He said then he told the warden, let's ride.

As the drug took effect, he said, stings my arm, man. The death of Ladd exposed a flaw

and the normally stringent safeguards imposed by the federal courts on the death penalty

states. All of the states are generally allowed to set their own standards. The Supreme Court

has ruled twice on the issue of disability of the intellect, setting the parameters of

humane and civilized conduct in a ruling in 2002 and again last year, the Supreme Court

banned executions of people with mental retardation on the grounds that that was a form of cruel

and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. It also said the death penalty

states had to conform to standards set by medical science and not impose their own arbitrary

definitions of mental disability. Yet two prisoners who were categorically found to be

...