FRANKFORT, Ky., Sept. 14 (UPI) -- The Kentucky attorney general and the state Department of Corrections say they asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a stay of execution for a murderer.
Documents filed Monday by state prosecutor Jack Conway and the department asked the high court to order that Gregory Wilson, 53, be executed Thursday as per the death warrant signed in August by Gov. Steve Beshear, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal reported.
The request was prompted by Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd's order Friday that blocked Wilson's execution. Shepherd's ruling came in a case brought by three other inmates on Kentucky's death row, and Wilson later joined, challenging new state regulations governing Kentucky's execution protocol.
Shepherd said he had "substantial questions" about the regulations, particularly that they don't have safeguards protecting against the unconstitutional execution of a mentally retarded or insane person, The Courier-Journal said.
Wilson was convicted in 1988 of the abduction, rape, robbery and murder a year earlier of 36-year-old Deborah Pooley, an assistant manager of a Newport, Ky., restaurant.
In his order, Shepherd said Wilson's attorneys indicated the only known test of Wilson's IQ was administered when he was 14 years old, when his IQ was determined to be 62. The median IQ is 100.
The attorney general's petition Monday said the report of Wilson's IQ was from an unauthenticated purported school record.
In his petition, Conway argued concerns expressed in Shepherd's order that stayed the execution weren't raised by Wilson or the other plaintiffs in the case challenging the regulations.
