Reading the NBC story, one would get the impression that Holsey's intellectual disability is a fact, and the only question is whether that disability should exempt him from the death penalty.  "Lower courts had already rejected Robert Wayne Holsey's legal team's arguments that an intellectual disability and the fact that his trial lawyer was an alcoholic meant he should get a reprieve."

That is, of course, completely backwards.  The Supreme Court has settled that intellectual disability is a categorical exemption, and the dispute is whether Holsey is, in fact, intellectually disabled.  The CBS/AP story gets it right:

In their efforts to halt the execution, Holsey's lawyers argued that he was intellectually disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred execution of the intellectually disabled, but left the states to determine who is intellectually disabled.

Georgia requires death-row inmates to prove intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt in order to be spared execution on those grounds. Courts have consistently upheld Georgia's toughest-in-the-nation standard of proof on this issue.

But the U.S. Supreme Court in May knocked down a Florida law that said any inmate who tests above 70 on an IQ test is not intellectually disabled and may be executed. The opinion said IQ tests have a margin of error and inmates whose scores fall within the margin must be allowed to present other evidence of intellectual disability.

The state of Georgia argued in court filings that Holsey is not intellectually disabled. An expert found that Holsey had a learning disability but was not disabled, and his siblings relied on him as a leader, the state's lawyers argued.

The Georgia Legislature really should drop that "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for new cases going forward.  Preponderance will do.

As for Holsey, to his credit he did make his exit with dignity:

Moments before he was put to death, Holsey addressed the victim's father.

"Mr. Robinson, I'm sorry for taking your son's life that night," he said. "He didn't deserve to die like that."

Holsey added, "I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and my family."

Opponents of the death penalty say it eliminates any chance for redemption.  I disagree.  I think there is a kind of redemption for killers for accept their punishment, apologize to the victim's family, and exit with dignity.

Meanwhile, back in Missouri:

Goodwin's sister, Mary Mifflin, wrote in a statement that the death penalty "is not a just punishment for his crime - an act that occurred out of passion, not premeditation, by a man with the mental capabilities of a child, not an adult."

Referring to people on the low end of the IQ scale as having the mental capabilities of a child goes back to the old, discredited notion of "intelligence quotient" as mental age over chronological age.  Psychologists abandoned that long ago.  Intellectual disabled adults do not have the minds of children.  In this case, Goodwin is not ID anyway, and he had the ability to know what he was doing, know that it was wrong, and refrain from doing it if he chose to.  By no stretch of the imagination is this punishment for this crime by this person an injustice.

Crotts' daughter, Debbie Decker, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Goodwin deserved no mercy.

"I've been sitting back waiting for this to happen," Decker said of the execution. "I'm hoping all these bad memories will go away."

They won't go away.  That's why we don't use the word "closure" any more, because it had been misused to mean that.  But victims' families have said that after an execution there is a sense of finality, a certainty that the perpetrator has been fully punished, that does help them move on with their lives.  We sincerely wish that for families of both victims in these cases.

The problem is it takes way too long.  Sixteen years is relatively fast, compared to typical executions today, but it is far longer than necessary in a case with no doubt whatever of the identity of the perpetrator.  The D.C. Sniper was executed less than six years after sentence, and that is what should be typical.