Johnny Paul Penry

Johnny Paul Penry (born May 5, 1956) is a Texas prisoner serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without parole for rape and murder. He was on death row between 1980 and 2008, and his case generated discussion about the appropriateness of the death penalty for offenders who are thought to be intellectually disabled.

Penry's case went twice to the United States Supreme Court: Penry v. Lynaugh (1989) found that executing intellectually disabled persons is not cruel and unusual punishment; Penry v. Johnson (2001) found that the jury's instructions regarding mitigating factors were incomplete and that Penry should be re-sentenced. Prosecutors reached a plea agreement with him in 2008 under which he was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.

Penry sustained brain damage at birth related to complications from breech positioning. His mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. One of Penry's siblings said that their mother would threaten to cut off Penry's genitalia, and had forced him to drink his own urine and eat his own feces. "We were all abused, but he was abused the worst," his sister said. Penry did not attend school past the first grade.

In 1977, Penry was convicted of rape and sentenced to five years in prison; he was released from prison in the summer of 1979 after serving two years for that crime. Penry found work delivering appliances. In October 1979, he raped and killed a young woman by stabbing her with a pair of scissors. The victim, Pamela Moseley Carpenter, had received an appliance delivery from Penry a few weeks before the crime. Penry had been out of prison for three months at the time of the murder. Carpenter, 22 years old when she died, was the younger sister of National Football League kicker Mark Moseley.

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