On the morning of September 25, 1996, at about 6:45, the Tyler Fire Department in East Texas took a call about a fire at a home in the city. The firefighters found the front and back doors locked and forced them open. Inside there was a great deal of smoke and very little fire. In a bedroom they found the body of Vicki Ann Garner, 38. Her hands were tied together with a cord. The house had been ransacked, and the fire had been set on purpose.
The same day, the police arrested a 39-year-old barber named Robert Charles Ladd. He had been out of prison for almost four years. Eighteen years earlier, in Dallas, he had killed a young mother and her two small children and set fire to their apartment. Texas had released him in 1992. He was tried and sentenced to death for Garner's murder in 1997, and for most of the next eighteen years his case turned on one number from his childhood: an IQ score of 67, recorded when he was thirteen and in the custody of the state's juvenile system. Texas executed him on January 29, 2015.
Robert Charles Ladd was born on March 19, 1957, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which lists Dallas County as his native county. Prison records give his highest completed grade as tenth and his prior occupation as barber.
Most of what the record says about his childhood was gathered decades later, for the litigation over his mental capacity. At a federal hearing in 2005, Lubertha Cephus, his mother's first cousin, testified that his mother drank heavily while pregnant with him, and a defense expert said he had a low birth weight consistent with fetal alcohol syndrome. His sister, Nelma Thomas, testified that as a boy he did not understand the idea of suits in card games or that he had to run to first base in kickball, that at twelve to fourteen he often dressed wrongly for the weather, and that when his mother sent him to the store he could not remember what he had been sent to buy. On cross-examination the same defense expert agreed that Ladd had been a latchkey child who could look after himself and could handle money by the age of eleven.
At thirteen Ladd was sent to the Gatesville State School, in the custody of the Texas Youth Commission, after setting a fire in his girlfriend's bedroom, according to the Fifth Circuit's 2002 opinion. A trial witness later referred to "three or four juvenile arrests."
At Gatesville he was given a Wechsler IQ test and scored 67. A staff psychiatrist, Dr. Weldon Ash, saw him at least three times in late 1970 and wrote that the boy was "rather obviously retarded," with a diagnosis of "mental retardation, mild to moderate" and "unsocialized aggressive reaction of adolescence." Ladd was prescribed Mellaril, an antipsychotic, to control impulsive behavior; the doctor withdrew it after about a month. The records also described inadequate supervision and nurturing at home. None of this reached the jury that sentenced him to death in 1997. His trial lawyer never obtained the juvenile file, and it surfaced only when post-conviction lawyers went looking for it.
His adult record began early. TDCJ lists a prison term from Dallas County received on April 24, 1975, with the charge recorded as unknown, ending in discharge on January 27, 1976. The Texas Attorney General's office has said he was convicted in 1974 of unauthorized use of a vehicle.
On October 25, 1978, in Dallas, Ladd killed Vivian Thompson, an 18-year-old mother, and her two children, Latoya and Maurice. The date comes from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; the names come from the Austin Chronicle's 2015 coverage of his execution. The children were 18 months and three years old, according to the Attorney General's summary of the trial evidence.
Very little has been published about Vivian Thompson herself beyond her age and the fact that she was raising two small children. Nothing in the record gives her family's account of her, where she worked or went to school, or what she was doing in the hours before she died.
What is known about the crime comes from the evidence the State of Texas presented at Ladd's 1997 trial, during the punishment phase, when Texas law allows a jury to hear about a defendant's earlier crimes. According to the Attorney General's summary of that evidence, Thompson was stabbed ten times in the neck, chest and abdomen and had ligature injuries to her neck. A fire was set on her body. Medical evidence indicated that the fire was set in a way consistent with an attempt to destroy evidence of a sexual assault, and the Fifth Circuit's 2002 opinion states that Ladd sexually assaulted her. Her two children died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning; burns were an additional cause of death for the three-year-old.
Ladd pleaded guilty, according to the Associated Press. Sources disagree about the sentence. The AP and the Fifth Circuit describe a 40-year prison term. TDCJ's record lists a life sentence for murder from Dallas County, received March 21, 1980. NBC News, reporting in 2015, described the earlier case as a "1980 stabbing and arson," which appears to refer to the year of the conviction rather than the crime.
On October 13, 1992, Texas released him under mandatory supervision to Tyler, according to TDCJ. News reports have generally called it parole. The AP wrote that he had served about a third of a 40-year term; the Fifth Circuit's 2014 opinion says 16 years. The dates in the prison record put his time in custody at roughly 14 years if counted from the October 1978 killings, or 12 and a half from his March 1980 arrival in prison.
In Tyler, Ladd ended up at the Andrews Center, a community mental health and mental retardation center. According to testimony at his 2005 federal hearing, he was referred there from a substance abuse facility and worked in its vocational division. Al Matson, who managed that division, described him as a capable worker. He was placed in some of the harder jobs, as a line leader and in quality control, and he operated an ultrasonic welding machine, set up electronic scales and drove a forklift. Matson said he needed no special supervision, would have been promoted but for his criminal record, and received several raises that took him above minimum wage. He was eventually fired for absenteeism and confrontations with supervisors. A prosecution witness at trial testified that the firing came a few months before the fire, before that summer.
His ACLU lawyers later said that at 36 he had qualified for services at the Andrews Center, which serves people with intellectual disabilities as well as people with mental illness. The Fifth Circuit's 2002 opinion says Ladd had worked at the rehabilitation center and been a client there, and that Vicki Garner was employed there.
Vicki Ann Garner was 38 and lived in Tyler. Her parents, identified in the appeals court record as Gene and Betty Garner, testified at the trial. Her sister Teresa Wooten became the family's public voice over the eighteen years of litigation that followed.
Little has been reported about her life, and what has been reported differs in emphasis. The Fifth Circuit describes her as an employee of the center where Ladd had worked. NBC News, reporting on the execution, called her "a mentally disabled woman," and the East Texas station KLTV, in 2003, described her as "a mentally challenged Tyler woman." At the punishment phase of the trial her mother and sister told the jury, in the appeals court's summary, that she had "many fine, endearing qualities" and that her death had shattered the lives of her family. In 2003, waiting through another delay, her mother said: "Sometimes the sad things push their way in, and we try to think of the good times. She'll always be in our hearts."
The account below follows the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' summary of the trial evidence, viewed, as that court was required to view it, in the light most favorable to the verdict.
Early on the evening of Tuesday, September 24, 1996, Garner had a friend over at her home in Tyler. The friend left at about 8:15 p.m. Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., Ladd arrived at the residence of John T. Robertson, less than a mile from Garner's home. He gave Robertson several small household appliances and other items in exchange for five $20 "rocks" of crack cocaine. One of the appliances was an RCA combination television and videocassette recorder, serial number 619320052. Early the next morning, Robertson testified, Ladd came back with more items and got two more rocks.
At about 6:45 a.m. on September 25 the fire was reported. Garner was found face down on the bedroom floor, unclothed below the waist, with her hands tied, a belt around her neck and ligature marks on her ankles. The fire had been set on or around her body, most likely on bedding placed between her legs. The autopsy found that she died of manual strangulation and had blunt force injuries to the head, and found spermatozoa. TDCJ's summary says she was beaten to death with a hammer, and the AP reported that she was strangled and beaten with a hammer. Missing from the home were a microwave oven, the TV-VCR, two telephones and, according to her mother's testimony, a blender, a clock and a toaster. TDCJ's summary also lists jewelry and food.
The case came together within a day. On September 25, a man named Edwin Wright pawned the TV-VCR and one of the telephones. He testified that he had received them from Robertson. The same day, police recovered other items identified as Garner's from Robertson's apartment. In Garner's home they found the instruction manual for an RCA TV-VCR, with the serial number 619320052 written on it, the same number as the set Ladd had traded.
Ladd was arrested that day, September 25. Jewelry he was carrying was identified as Garner's. A fingerprint on the microwave oven matched his, as did a palm print lifted from a kitchen cabinet in Garner's home. Tests on the sperm found DNA whose characteristics, the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote, paralleled Ladd's in many respects; such a match could be expected from only one man in 170,000. TDCJ's record lists Johnny Roberson as a co-defendant; the court opinions treat Robertson as a state witness, and no charge against him has been reported. Nothing has been made public about Ladd's interrogation or any statement he gave police.
A Smith County grand jury indicted Ladd for capital murder in the 114th District Court, on the theory that he killed Garner while committing burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault and arson. Ladd's trial lawyer was a former prosecutor, according to Amnesty International.
Jury selection produced the issue that the federal courts would examine most closely. Texas law allows either side, once, to ask for a random "shuffle" of the jury panel before questioning begins. The panel had more than 200 people. Ladd is Black and Garner was white. When the State asked for a shuffle, the defense objected that seven of the first group of potential jurors were Black and that the shuffle would change the racial makeup of the jury. The trial judge asked for the State's reasons. The prosecutors said race had nothing to do with it and pointed to a cluster of people with criminal histories near the front of the panel (fourteen of the first forty-two, they said), few people in coats and ties, few older professionals, and a probation officer they wanted to avoid striking. The judge allowed the shuffle.
At the guilt phase the State called 40 witnesses, among them police officers, forensic serologists and Garner's friends, and the defense called four. Gene and Betty Garner testified that the microwave, the TV-VCR, the telephone, the blender, the clock, the toaster and the jewelry taken from Ladd had belonged to their daughter. On August 23, 1997, the jury found Ladd guilty of capital murder.
At the punishment phase the State called eleven witnesses. Jurors heard about the 1978 Dallas killings and saw photocopies of crime-scene photographs from that case. They heard about the juvenile arrests and saw sixteen disciplinary reports from Ladd's earlier time in prison. Two psychiatrists testified for the State that he would probably be dangerous in the future. One of them, Dr. Tynus McNeel, said Ladd had antisocial personality disorder, that the disorder was permanent, and that he had no remorse.
The defense called no witnesses at this phase, according to the Fifth Circuit. Amnesty International's account is that the defense argued only that Ladd's past prison infractions had been nonviolent. Ladd did not testify. The jury found that the killing was deliberate, that Ladd would probably commit criminal acts of violence that would be a continuing threat to society, and that there was not enough mitigating evidence to warrant a life sentence. The judge imposed a death sentence on August 27, 1997, and Ladd arrived on death row on August 29.
Ladd's appeal raised 113 points of error. On October 6, 1999, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in an opinion by Judge Mansfield. It held that the evidence was sufficient, that the trial judge had not abused his discretion in refusing to excuse several prospective jurors, and that the jury could properly find him a future danger based on the 1978 killings and the psychiatric testimony. It found one error: the trial judge had wrongly exempted Gene and Betty Garner from the rule that keeps witnesses out of the courtroom until they testify, because the victim exemption covers victims, not their parents. The court held the error harmless. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case on April 17, 2000.
Meanwhile, Ladd's new lawyers had found the Gatesville records. In state habeas proceedings, with an evidentiary hearing on June 11, 1999, they argued that trial counsel had been ineffective for failing to find and present them. Counsel testified, but no psychiatric expert did. The State's psychologist and psychiatrist from the trial said they would discount the old score of 67 because they knew too little about how the test had been given and because it did not fit his later achievements. The trial court found that the score "did not support an inference that Applicant was mentally retarded because of a higher IQ score, the completion of the GED program and completion of barber school as an adult." The Court of Criminal Appeals adopted those findings and denied relief on December 15, 1999.
A federal district court in the Eastern District of Texas denied habeas relief on October 24, 2001. On October 24, 2002, the Fifth Circuit affirmed. On the jury shuffle, Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale wrote that whether the Batson rule against race-based jury strikes applies to shuffles was an open question, but that even assuming it did, the state court had reasonably accepted the prosecutors' race-neutral reasons. On the lawyer's performance, the court said that once counsel knew of a juvenile arrest, the complete absence of juvenile records "should have been noticed and investigated," and that the state court's finding that he had performed adequately "may have been unreasonable." But it held that Ladd could not show the failure changed the outcome. Some of the records cut both ways, since they described yet another fire; the IQ evidence was undercut by his later GED and a higher score; and the evidence of future danger was, in the court's word, "overwhelming." That Ladd killed again some 16 years after a similar crime, the court wrote, "vividly demonstrates his future dangerousness." The Supreme Court turned away a further petition on March 24, 2003, as untimely.
By then the law had changed. In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the execution of people with what was then called mental retardation, and left it to the states to define the condition. Texas set Ladd's execution for April 23, 2003.
On April 7, 2003, his lawyers filed a new state habeas application raising an Atkins claim. They attached the Gatesville IQ score, Dr. Ash's notes, records showing he had functioned below grade level and had social difficulties as a child, and the Mellaril prescription, and asked for a hearing. Ten days later, without a hearing, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the application for failing to plead sufficient facts.
Ladd's lawyer, Sydney Young, went to the Fifth Circuit. On the day of the scheduled execution, the court stayed it so that Ladd could file a second federal petition. Garner's family was in the car on the way to Huntsville when they got the call. "I spent a week preparing myself mentally for six o'clock this evening," Teresa Wooten told KLTV. "I don't think that we'll ever find closure." Her father was angry at the legal system, not at Ladd, he said. Ladd had written letters of apology, and Gene Garner believed them. "I think the man was sincere in his apology. I really do. And if he knew what he did, he's not retarded."
Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen told the station that more recent testing showed Ladd was competent. "He scored 85 or 86 on the IQ test when he went [into] prison," he said, "obviously way way above any level of even mild mental retardation."
Ladd filed the second federal petition on June 20, 2003. The district court held an evidentiary hearing on June 27, 2005.
The defense expert, Richard Garnett, a licensed professional counselor, testified that Ladd met all three parts of the Texas definition: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, related limits in adaptive behavior, and onset before 18. He relied on the Wechsler score of 67 and on Dr. Ash's observations. He discounted the later score of 86, explaining that it came from the Beta, a screening test that gives only a rough estimate, and he discounted a more recent Wechsler score of 60 because of signs that Ladd had not tried his best. He described deficits in handling money, work skills, use of community resources, communication and social skills, attributed them to intellectual disability rather than antisocial personality disorder, and said that a GED and learning to play chess were within the reach of a mildly disabled person. He believed Ladd had received substantial help writing his many letters. On cross-examination he agreed that Ladd read above a tenth-grade level and had completed vocational training in prison. A death row corrections officer, Russell Pinckard, also testified for Ladd, along with Cephus and Thomas.
For the State, Matson described Ladd's work at the Andrews Center. Howard Alexander, a prison barber instructor, said his program required at least a seventh-grade education and could not be completed by anyone with serious learning deficiencies; he did not remember Ladd, but his records showed that Ladd had passed the state barber exam and was one of his better students. Dr. Thomas Allen, a forensic psychologist who had testified at trial that Ladd would be a future danger, said he did not trust the childhood score because Ladd tended to lie and lacked motivation, and there were no notes on his effort during the test. He agreed the score of 60 reflected malingering. He gave Ladd a version of the Vineland adaptive behavior scale, modified for a prisoner, on which Ladd scored in the average range, and he attributed Ladd's problems to antisocial personality disorder.
The district court did not rule for more than seven years. On February 15, 2013, it found that Ladd did have significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, a finding Amnesty International later stressed. Both sides' experts agreed he had adaptive deficits in functional academics, social skills, work and communication. The court credited Dr. Allen and attributed all but the communication deficit to the personality disorder, and found that none of the deficits was significant. Texas law required at least two. The claim failed. Amnesty reported that the judge called the State expert's approach "not beyond debate."
On April 8, 2014, a Fifth Circuit panel led by Judge Patrick Higginbotham affirmed. The court noted the State's argument that the district court had not given the Texas courts enough deference, and said much of the difficulty was "directly attributable to the long length of time this case was pending in the district court." It held that the ruling survived review in any event. The experts, it said, had "sharply disagreed" about the cause of Ladd's deficits, and the judge who heard them was better placed to decide. The Supreme Court denied review on October 6, 2014.
According to the Austin Chronicle, Ladd was briefly set for execution on December 11, 2014, a date TDCJ rejected, and on December 4 he received a new date of January 29, 2015. Brian Stull of the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project represented him in his final appeals.
On January 21, 2015, Ladd filed a third state habeas application arguing that the Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Hall v. Florida had undercut the Texas test for intellectual disability set out in Ex parte Briseno (2004). The ACLU pointed out that Briseno's factors drew in part on the character Lennie Small in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. On January 27 the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the application as an abuse of the writ without reaching the merits. Judge Alcala concurred, writing that parts of Briseno "may warrant reevaluation at some future point" but that Hall did not give Ladd a new legal basis for his claim.
The same day, Ladd and another condemned man, Garcia Glen White, sued over the compounded pentobarbital Texas used for executions. The district court refused an injunction. On January 28 the Fifth Circuit affirmed, calling Ladd's concerns about compounded drugs "essentially speculative" and noting that Texas's one-drug protocol had been used without significant incident in its previous fourteen executions. White's execution had been stayed by the state court on other grounds. In the Supreme Court, Assistant Attorney General Kelli Weaver reminded the justices that "each court that has reviewed Ladd's claim has determined that Ladd is not intellectually disabled." Late on the afternoon of January 29 the Court denied both of Ladd's requests.
Ladd was executed that evening in the death chamber at Huntsville. He addressed Garner's sister by name. TDCJ records his last statement: "Teresa I am really sorry, please don't have hate in your heart. I really feel like this. I hope you can find peace in your heart and happiness. A revenge death won't get you anything." He spoke to people the record identifies only by first name, among them Joanna, Stacy, Art and Trix, and asked that his family be told he loved them. He ended: "Joanna, I love you. Let's ride."
As the pentobarbital took effect, the AP reported, he said, "Stings my arm, man!" He took deep breaths, began to snore, and then stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 7:02 p.m. He was 57. It was the second execution in Texas that year, the 520th in Texas and the 1,400th in the United States since executions resumed in the 1970s, according to Amnesty International and the Death Penalty Information Center. It came two days after Georgia executed Warren Hill, who had also argued he was intellectually disabled.
Teresa Wooten said afterward that she accepted his apology and held no anger toward him. "We hate the sin he committed. We hate the deed he committed," she said. "But at the end of his life we no longer hated the man and have sympathy for his family."
Stull said in a statement that Ladd "was executed because Texas uses idiosyncratic standards, based on stereotypes rather than science, to determine intellectual disability."
The case is closed. TDCJ's record confirms that Robert Charles Ladd was executed on January 29, 2015. No other killing has been publicly attributed to him.
In March 2017, in Moore v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Briseno factors were inconsistent with medical practice and with Atkins. The Court also rejected two other practices that Texas had used: discounting an IQ score near 70 because the margin of error could put it higher, and treating personality disorders and other conditions as alternative explanations for adaptive deficits. The second of those was the reasoning on which the federal courts had rejected Ladd's claim. Writing a week after the decision, Stull said he thought of Ladd, who had believed the Supreme Court would eventually agree with him. "Robert was right. The Supreme Court would see the light. Just too late for Robert."
Neither the 2017 decision nor any later ruling reopened the question of Ladd's own capacity, and the court findings against him stand as they were. For the families, as Teresa Wooten said in 2003 and again in 2015, there was no closure. Vivian Thompson and her two children appear in the public record almost entirely as evidence in someone else's trial.
1. Cause of Garner's death. The appeals courts and the autopsy evidence describe manual strangulation with blunt force injuries to the head. TDCJ's summary says she was beaten to death with a hammer. The AP combined the two. 2. The 1978 sentence. A 40-year term (AP, Fifth Circuit) or a life sentence (TDCJ). The years served are given variously as about a third of 40 years (AP), 16 years (Fifth Circuit, 2014) and, by the prison record's dates, about 12 to 14 years. 3. Sexual assault in 1978. The Fifth Circuit's 2002 opinion states that Ladd sexually assaulted Vivian Thompson. The Attorney General's summary describes the fire as consistent with an attempt to destroy evidence of a sexual assault. Nothing reported shows that he was charged with or pleaded guilty to a sexual offense in that case. 4. Intellectual disability. Contested to the end. The courts found subaverage intellectual functioning but not significant adaptive deficits; his lawyers, his childhood psychiatrist and human rights groups maintained that he was intellectually disabled. The IQ scores on record are 67 (age 13, Wechsler), 86 (prison screening test; the district attorney said 85 or 86), and 60 (later Wechsler, which both experts attributed to malingering). 5. Relationship between Ladd and Garner. The sources agree both were connected with the Andrews Center but differ on her role there, as an employee (Fifth Circuit) or as a person described by the press as mentally disabled. 6. Names and spellings. The victim's name appears as Vicki Ann Garner in the Texas courts, TDCJ, the Attorney General and the AP, and as Vickie Ann Gardner in the Fifth Circuit's 2002 opinion and the Austin Chronicle.
March 19, 1957: Robert Charles Ladd born; Dallas County listed as his native county.
1970: At 13, in Texas Youth Commission custody at Gatesville State School after setting a fire; IQ tested at 67; psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Weldon Ash.
April 24, 1975 to January 27, 1976: First adult prison term, from Dallas County.
October 25, 1978: Vivian Thompson, 18, and her children Latoya and Maurice killed in Dallas.
March 21, 1980: Received in prison on the Dallas County murder conviction.
October 13, 1992: Released under mandatory supervision to Tyler.
September 24, 1996, evening: Vicki Ann Garner's friend leaves at 8:15 p.m.; Ladd trades her appliances for crack cocaine between 9 and 10 p.m.
September 25, 1996: Fire reported at 6:45 a.m.; Garner found dead; Ladd arrested.
August 23, 1997: Convicted of capital murder in Smith County.
August 27, 1997: Sentenced to death; arrives on death row August 29.
October 6, 1999: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
December 15, 1999: First state habeas application denied.
April 17, 2000: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
2002: Atkins v. Virginia decided.
October 24, 2002: Fifth Circuit affirms denial of first federal petition.
April 17, 2003: State court dismisses Atkins application without a hearing.
April 23, 2003: Fifth Circuit stays execution on the scheduled day.
June 27, 2005: Federal evidentiary hearing on intellectual disability.
February 15, 2013: District court denies the Atkins claim.
April 8, 2014: Fifth Circuit affirms.
October 6, 2014: Supreme Court denies review.
January 27, 2015: Court of Criminal Appeals dismisses third application; pentobarbital suit filed and injunction refused.
January 28, 2015: Fifth Circuit affirms denial of the injunction.
January 29, 2015: Supreme Court denies stay; Ladd executed at Huntsville, pronounced dead at 7:02 p.m.
March 2017: Moore v. Texas rejects the Briseno factors.