Missouri plans a midnight execution of Paul Goodwin while his attorneys argue he is mentally disabled

In 1996, Joan Crotts got a new neighbor, and not a particularly neighborly one. Crotts, a widow in her 60s at the time, lived next to a boardinghouse in St. Louis.

Paul Goodwin, an imposing 6-foot-7-inch man who took up residence in the boardinghouse that summer, made a habit of lobbing vulgar insults toward Crotts. Later, Goodwin intensified his harassment of Crotts by throwing chicken bones and beer cans into her yard and threatening her when she complained.

Goodwin later earned himself an eviction from the boardinghouse; on his way out, he promised retribution upon Crotts. A year and a half later, he exacted his grisly revenge during the early morning hours of March 1, 1998, when he returned to Crotts’ residence, tried to sexually assault her and threw her down her basement stairs. He struck her several times in the head with a hammer, inflicting injuries that would later kill her when surgeons tried to save her life.

Like most of the nine men Missouri has executed in 2014, the nature of Goodwin’s crime does not make him a sympathetic character. Goodwin is set to die by lethal injection one minute after midnight on Wednesday; he would be Missouri’s 10th inmate to meet the executioner this year, as many as Texas has put to death over the same span.

But Goodwin’s attorneys argue that their client is mentally disabled, unable to understand the punishment that’s coming his way. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the past that executing mentally disabled inmates is unconstitutional, no matter how reprehensible the crime in question. But defining the precise parameters of mental disability remains a tremendous expanse of gray area under the law.

Goodwin’s attorneys describe his upbringing in an emotionally distant household where his low intellect and hearing impairment were greeted with ridicule. When tested for IQ as a 13-year-old, he registered a score of 72. He was held back a grade three separate times in elementary school, enough so that he was old enough to drive by the time he entered the eighth grade.

Goodwin, his attorneys say, has the mental capacity of an early teen. Appeals courts over the years, however, have not been persuaded by Goodwin’s pleas of diminished mental ability to forestall his execution. In 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court found Goodwin had enough mental cognition to understand what he did and the punishment that awaits him.

The case is before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, a court that has delivered mixed messages about various questions of Missouri’s administration of capital punishment over the year. Goodwin’s attorneys have also asked Gov. Jay Nixon to consider clemency, an unlikely outcome.