We periodically run letters from inmates on death row. Today we bring you a letter from convicted Texas murderer Robert Charles Ladd, whose final appeal was recently rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, and who will soon receive an execution date.

Ladd is on death row after being convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of of Vicki Ann Garner in her Texas home. Ladd also stole possessions from Garner's house and traded them for crack cocaine. He had previously served 16 years in prison after being convicted of the 1978 murder of a woman named Vivian Thompson, and her two young children.

Ladd's lawyers argued that he should not be executed because he scored a 67 on an IQ test as a young man, which would qualify him as mentally retarded. They presented other expert testimony to this effect as well, but it did not sway the courts.

Here is Ladd's letter to us, which he sent after seeing that we published a letter from his fellow inmate Ray Jasper, who was executed last March.

Previously

The full archives of our "Letters from Death Row" series can be found here.