U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle has removed Elton O. McLaughlin from the state's death...

U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle has removed Elton O. McLaughlin from the state's death row because he is mentally retarded, ruling that he should not be executed for murdering 3 people in 1984. McLaughlin, 55, is the 12th death row inmate in North Carolina spared because he was found to be mentally retarded.
In McLaughlin's case, some disputed the validity of a test he took at age 10. It showed he had an IQ of 70, but it was given by a teacher.
The state's lawyers argued that the IQ test wasn't properly administered and therefore could not be used as proof that he was mentally retarded. In June 2003, Bladen County Superior Court Judge James F. Ammons Jr. sided with the state, finding no credible evidence that McLaughlin scored an IQ of 70 or less.
But Judge Boyle noted that what state law requires was not possible in the segregated Bladen County school that McLaughlin attended in the 1960s. The school did not have psychologists to administer IQ tests.
To require such conditions now under state law is unfair, Boyle reasoned in his order.
McLaughlin was sentenced to death for a murder-for-hire plot to kill James Elwell Worley, whose wife, Shelia Worley, wanted him dead. McLaughlin also was sentenced to death for later murdering Shelia Worley because she failed to pay him $3,000 and talked to police. At the same time, McLaughlin killed Worley's 4-year-old daughter, Psoma Baggett.