13 December 2019 :

Travis Trevino Runnels, 46, Black, was executed. Runnels was sent to death row in 2005 (see HoC 28/10/2005) for slitting the throat of prison supervisor Stanley Wiley, 38, during a January 2005 outburst at the Clements Unit boot factory. At the time, Runnels was roughly a decade into a 70-year sentence for aggravated robbery. Prison officials recorded his time of death at 7:26 p.m., less than an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his final appeal. Runnels died without a last word. Though Runnels’ attorneys had raised claims about a now-notorious state witness they say gave “false testimony,” the courts ultimately decided it didn’t matter and just before 7 p.m. ruled that his execution could go forward. From the outset, Runnels admitted his guilt, so the entire trial came down to one question: Did he deserve death, or could he be sentenced to life in prison? To answer that, a jury had to unanimously agree that Runnels would pose a future danger, even behind bars. That’s where a controversial expert named A.P. Merillat came in. Then an investigator with the state’s Special Prosecution Unit tasked with handling prison crimes, Merillat took the stand at Runnels’ trial and told the jury about the danger and violence inside the Texas prison system. Were someone like Runnels sentenced to life, Merillat told the court, he’d be put in general population and have the opportunity to wreak havoc. But that wasn’t true, according to Runnels’ attorneys - and it could have made a difference in the outcome. “When the average person thinks about what justice is supposed to be about in this country it’s supposed to be about finding the truth,” said defense attorney Mark Pickett. “Travis, just like anybody in this country, deserves a trial where people aren’t lying. No matter what you did, what the jury should be hearing is the truth.” In a phone interview Tuesday, Merillat (who’s now at the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office) reiterated that the prison system at the time was a violent place, and stressed that he never knowingly gave inaccurate information. But, he added, if he did err he hoped that God and the courts would make it right. In their response to the appeal, the state did not dispute that Merillat’s statements were inaccurate, but argued that the claims of false testimony should have been raised years earlier - and that more accurate information may not have made a difference in the outcome at trial anyway. Runnels was the 9th man executed in Texas this year, and the 567^th since Texas resumed executions il 1982. With the execution of Travis Runnels in Texas on December 11, the USA has now executed 1,512 individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision. Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Runnels was the 22nd person executed in the U.S. This year recorded the second fewest executions in the U.S. since 1991. There were three fewer than last year.

07 November 2019 :

Justen Hall, 38, White, was executed. Former gang leader Hall admitted to police that he strangled Melanie Billhartz with an electrical cord, then ordered her fingers chopped off before ditching her body in the desert on October 28, 2002. The killing was part of an effort to prevent her from drawing attention to an El Paso drug house where Hall and other white nationalists made meth. Even though no one saw the killing, Hall was sentenced to die in 2005. At first, he waived his appeals. Then in 2013, attorneys with the state's Office of Capital and Forensic Writs filed a motion asking for “touch” DNA testing on the cord used to kill Billhartz, saying that evidence could exonerate him in spite of the testimony used to convict him. His legal team wrote: “No physical evidence or forensic evidence connected Mr. Hall to Ms. Billhartz’s murder, and the state relied on contradictory testimony from informants and an unreliable confession to implicate Mr. Hall.” But, as the case moved ahead in fits and starts, Hall asked again to waive his appeals and be executed, according to court records. “These walls 24/7 have broken me,” he wrote in a letter to the court. “It is taking every last ounce of will to even make it from day to day.” In a phone conference in 2017, he told the judge he was guilty and testing would only confirm it. His lawyers again questioned his mental state, pointing out that he’d just tried to kill himself on death row and had a long history of psychiatric problems that had only grown worse during his years in solitary confinement. The courts denied his appeal for testing in early 2019, and a few months later an El Paso judge greenlit a November execution date. Hall  becomes the 8th inmate put to death this year in Texas, the 566th person executed in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 19th this year in the US, and the 1,509th person executed in the United States since 1977.

26 September 2019 :

Robert Sparks, 45, Black, was executed. Sparks had been sentenced to death in 2008 (see HoC 11/12/2008) for the September 2007 killing of his wife, Chare Agnew, 30, and his two stepsons – Harold Sublet Jr., 9, and Raeqwon Agnew, 10. Then, he has told police, he raped his two stepdaughters, who were 12 and 14 at the time. He tried to justify his actions by telling police and reporters that Ms. Agnew was putting insecticide in his food to poison him and that the boys helped her. Sparks' lawyers had argued he suffered from severe mental illness and had been diagnosed as a delusional psychotic and with schizoaffective disorder, a condition characterized by hallucinations. A psychologist hired by Sparks' attorneys said in an affidavit this month that Sparks "meets full criteria for a diagnosis of" intellectual disability. On Tuesday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stop his execution on claims he's intellectually disabled, saying his attorneys had not presented sufficient evidence to show Sparks is mentally disabled and his attorneys had failed to raise such a claim in a timely manner. Sparks became the seventh inmate put to death this year in Texas, the 565th person executed in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 16th this year in the U.S. and the 1,506th person executed in the United States since 1977.

15 September 2019 :

Mark Soliz, 37, Hispanic, was executed. He had been sentenced to death on March 23, 2012 (see) in Johnson County in the fatal shooting of Nancy Weatherly, 61, during a robbery on June 29, 2010 of her rural home. At his trial, prosecutors said Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, committed several crimes in the Fort Worth area over eight days in June 2010. After fatally shooting a deliveryman around 6 a.m. June 29, 2010, the duo later that morning drove in a stolen car to Weatherly’s home. Prosecutors say Soliz and Ramos forced their way into the home at gunpoint and ransacked the place, taking a television, cellphones and credit cards. Police say Soliz confessed to killing Weatherly and ballistics and fingerprint evidence also tied him to the slaying. Ramos was sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Weatherly and the deliveryman, Ruben Martinez. Authorities say the 2 fatal shootings capped an 8-day crime spree that stretched across two counties and included at least 13 separate offenses, including several non-fatal shootings, burglary, robbery and car-jackings. During a five-minute final statement, Soliz apologized profusely from the death chamber gurney. Texas executed Soliz after a federal appeals court denied him a stay and dismissed his claim that his lifelong mental impairments resulting from fetal alcohol syndrome should exempt him from execution. Soliz had sought a stay and to be resentenced to life without parole, arguing that his mother’s alcohol consumption during her pregnancy impaired his intellectual development in a manner that was the “‘functional equivalent’ of conditions already recognized as disqualifying exemptions to the death penalty.” Soliz becomes the 6th person executed this year in Texas, the 564th person executed in Texas since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 15th person executed this year in the USA, and the 1,505th person executed since the United States resumed executions in 1977.

06 September 2019 :

Billy Jack Crutsinger, 64, White, was executed. He was sentence to death in 2003 in Tarrant County for slaying an elderly mother and daughter on April 6, 2003. The victims were 89-year-old Pearl “R.D”. Magouirk and her 71-year-old daughter, Patricia “Pat” Syren. One day Crutsinger showed up at the women’s home to do some work but instead stabbed them to death and stole Syren’s Cadillac and credit card, according to court records. Authorities discovered the bodies two days later. During their investigation, they realized someone was using Syren’s credit card at bars in Galveston and that led them to Crutsinger. At first he gave them a fake name, but after officers took him to the station he confessed and agreed to a DNA sample. Five months later, he was sentenced to death. During his trial, according to 2003 media coverage, defense attorneys outlined Crutsinger’s tough life as well as his troubles with alcohol. Still, a jury took less than two hours to sentence him to death. Since that time, he’s filed appeals arguing that he was actually innocent, had a bad lawyer and that the trial judge should have suppressed any evidence stemming from his arrest. Crutsinger becomes the 5th ° person executed in Texas this year, the 563rd since Texas resumed executions in 1982, the 14th execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the 1,504th person executed in the United States since 1977. 

14 September 2019 :

Billy Jack Crutsinger, 64, White, was executed. He was sentence to death in 2003 in Tarrant County for slaying an elderly mother and daughter on April 6, 2003. The victims were 89-year-old Pearl “R.D”. Magouirk and her 71-year-old daughter, Patricia “Pat” Syren. One day Crutsinger showed up at the women’s home to do some work but instead stabbed them to death and stole Syren’s Cadillac and credit card, according to court records. Authorities discovered the bodies two days later. During their investigation, they realized someone was using Syren’s credit card at bars in Galveston and that led them to Crutsinger. At first he gave them a fake name, but after officers took him to the station he confessed and agreed to a DNA sample. Five months later, he was sentenced to death. During his trial, according to 2003 media coverage, defense attorneys outlined Crutsinger’s tough life as well as his troubles with alcohol. Still, a jury took less than two hours to sentence him to death. Since that time, he’s filed appeals arguing that he was actually innocent, had a bad lawyer and that the trial judge should have suppressed any evidence stemming from his arrest. Crutsinger becomes the 5th person executed in Texas this year, the 563rd since Texas resumed executions in 1982, the 14th execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the 1,504th person executed in the United States since 1977.

25 August 2019 :

Larry Ray Swearingen, 48, White, was executed at 6:47 p.m. for the death of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. "Lord forgive them. They don't know what they are doing," he said in his last words. Swearingen continued to maintain his innocence up until he was executed. Swearingen was sentenced to death in July 2000 for Trotter's abduction, rape and murder. The Montgomery College student was last seen alive on December 8, 1998. Her body was found in the Sam Houston National Forest on January 2, 1999. Swearingen repeatedly challenged his conviction and sentence over the years, and his execution was postponed 5 times. Over the years, he argued that the case against him was built on circumstantial evidence and questionable forensics. In a prepared statement his lawyer released after his death, Swearingen said he had proved his "innocence beyond any shadow of doubt," although it was not enough to stop his execution. Swearingen becomes the 4th person executed in Texas this year, the 562nd since Texas resumed executions in 1982, the 12th execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the 1,502nd person executed in the United States since 1977.

26 April 2019 :

John William King, 44, White, was executed with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:56 p.m.. King was pronounced dead shortly after 7 p.m. local time in a Hunstville prison. He had been sentenced to death in February 1999 for his role in the murder of James Byrd in the early morning hours of June 7, 1998. King and co-defendants Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Allen Berry beated Byrd, 49, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for 3 miles down a logging road in Japser County, tearing his body apart. Prosecutors said Byrd was targeted because he was black. King, a white supremacist, prior to the murder had recently been released from a Texas prison. He said that he had been repeatedly gang raped in prison by black inmates. Following his arrest, King never gave the police a formal statement and did not testify, but he sent letters to the Dallas Morning News proclaiming his innocence. King is the second man to be executed in the case. Brewer was executed in 2011 (see 21/09/2011) while Berry was sentenced to life in prison. The murder drew international and national attention. Texas and federal hate crime legislation are named in memory of Byrd. King becomes the third person executed in Texas this year, the 561st since Texas resumed executions in 1982, the 4th execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the 1,494th person executed in the United States since 1977.

04 March 2019 :

Billie Wayne Coble, 70, White, was executed today. Coble, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, was sentenced to death in 1990 in McLennan County in the August 1989 shooting deaths of his estranged wife’s parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha and her brother, police Sgt. Bobby Vicha. On August 14, 2007 (see) the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Coble’s death sentence because the jury was not allowed to give proper weight to mitigating factors that could have changed their answer to the future dangerousness issue. Coble was again sentenced to death by a jury on Sept. 4, 2008 (see). Coble becomes the second person executed in Texas this year, the 560th since Texas resumed executions in 1982, the third execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the 1,493rd person executed in the United States since 1977.

31 January 2019 :

Robert Mitchell Jennings was executed. Jennings, 61, Black, was sentenced to death in 1989 for killing Houston Police Officer Elston Howard, 24, on July 19, 1988 while attempting to rob an adult bookstore. "I shot him in the back two times," Jennings confessed, according to court records. At the time of the robbery, Jennings was on parole after serving 10 years of a 30-year sentence for another robbery. A co-defendant, Robert Harvell, drove the getaway car. Harvell was given a 55-year sentence for his role in the crime. In 2009, Jennings filed an appeal claiming ineffective assistance of counsel during the punishment phase of his trial. He charged that his attorneys failed to present psychological reports as evidence of mental defect, including indications he had an IQ in the mid-60s and organic brain dysfunction and did not seek the testimony of his family members regarding his troubled background. The federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas on 23/04/2012 granted a request for a new sentencing hearing based on his first two claims. Thus began a series of court actions in which the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court decision, and then the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court, which in 2015 reaffirmed its first decision. Jennings becomes the 1st person executed in Texas this year, and the 559^th since Texas resumes executions in 1982. Jennings becomes the 1st person executed in Usa in 2019, and the 1,491st since the United States resumed executions in 1977. On the Jennings’s case see also 24/03/2014.

19 December 2019 :

Death sentences in Texas continue to decline----Harris County, long a national leader in the use of the death penalty, has handed down just 2 death sentences in the past 5 years. 4 people were sentenced to death in Texas this year — one of the lowest rates since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1974. A new report shows much of that is due to declining use of the death penalty in cases from Harris County. Harris County has long led not only Texas, but the rest of the country in terms of total death sentences. But new death sentences have been on the decline since Texas created the option of a life sentence without possibility of parole in 2005. “Back in the 1990s, Harris County juries were sending 13, 14, 15 people to death row every year,” said Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “Over the past 5 years, however, there have been just 2 new death sentences out of Harris County.” The state of Texas put nine people to death this year, compared to 13 executions last year.

23 November 2019 :

A Smith County jury sentenced Dameon Jamarc Mosley, 28, Black, to death. Mosley, who was found guilty of capital murder last week in the Jan. 28, 2017 shooting death of Billy Stacks, 62, a gas station clerk, when the convenience store was robbed. Mosley pleaded not guilty Nov. 7. After hearing from the jury, 114th District Court Judge Christi Kennedy issued the sentence.

19 November 2019 :

Rodney Reed granted indefinite stay of execution. Rodney Reed was granted a stay of execution on Friday, 5 days before he was scheduled to be put to death for a murder he insists he did not commit. The Texas court of criminal appeals blocked the execution indefinitely and sent the case back to the trial court in Bastrop county, where Reed was sentenced in 1998 for the murder of Stacey Stites two years earlier. The court had previously rejected multiple appeals, but Reed’s lawyers argued that fresh evidence bolstered his claim of innocence. They said in a statement that they “are extremely relieved and thankful … this opportunity will allow for proper consideration of the powerful and mounting new evidence of Mr Reed’s innocence”. Millions of people, including a clutch of celebrities, have rallied behind Reed’s cause, helping to generate momentum and public attention as the execution date of 20 November loomed and his attorneys filed a flurry of motions in various courts, including the US supreme court. Names as stellar as Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian West, Rihanna and Meek Mill joined the crowds calling for a reprieve, while an online petition has drawn about 3m signatures. The world famous nun Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death penalty activist and author of the book Dead Man Walking, has also long supported Reed’s campaign. Stites, who was white, was engaged to marry a police officer, Jimmy Fennell. He failed two lie-detector tests and was originally a suspect before police switched focus months later, when DNA found inside her body was a match for Reed, who had previously been investigated for an unrelated allegation of sexual assault. Reed initially denied knowing Stites, later saying this was because as a black man in small-town Texas he feared admitting to an affair with a white woman. His lawyers at the Innocence Project, a not-for-profit legal group, argue that the trial was replete with flaws of the type seen in other death penalty cases that have given rise to fears of potential miscarriages of justice: racism, ineffective counsel, junk science, suppressed or missed evidence and the difficulties in persuading appeals courts to examine new evidence long after the original verdict. Earlier this month, 26 Texas lawmakers sent a letter to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and the members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, warning that executing Reed “without certainty about his guilt” risks eroding public trust “not only in capital punishment, but in Texas justice itself”. Michael McCaul, the Republican US congressman who represents the district where the crime was committed, also wrote to Abbott and the board members on Wednesday urging a delay. “A death sentence is final, and given the doubt surrounding his innocence at this time, I believe our state cannot execute Mr Reed in good conscience without fully reviewing all evidence,” he wrote. Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch advocate of the death penalty, said on Twitter last week that “a remarkable bipartisan coalition” had emerged in support of a delay. Earlier on Friday, before the intervention of the appeals court, the parole board had recommended a 120-day reprieve for Reed, which would have been a decision for Abbott, a pro-capital punishment Republican who has not commented publicly on the case. Though Texas is the nation’s death penalty hub – it has carried out eight of the 20 executions so far this year in the US – Reed’s family had been optimistic that a reprieve would be issued. His brother, Rodrick, said this week that Rodney is “very hopeful and he’s very thankful for all of the support, all of the prayers, everything that’s transpiring and unfolding … I feel confident with all the publicity – even more than that, with our faith in God – that we will get what we’re after.” Reed was convicted by an all-white jury of killing Stites near Bastrop, a small town 30 miles south-east of Austin. Prosecutors said that Reed, now 51, stopped the 19-year-old while she was driving to work an early-morning supermarket shift, raped and strangled her and left her body by the side of a country road. The forensic science basis for the timeline that implicated Reed at trial has been discredited and witnesses have since come forward to bolster his claim that he was in a relationship with the victim. Fennell, who through his lawyer has denied killing Stites, is no longer a police officer. He was released last year after spending a decade in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman in his custody in 2007. Reed was 10 days from being executed in 2015 before a Texas court granted a stay. This week his lawyers filed a document to the criminal appeals court that includes new witness statements indicating that Fennell behaved aggressively towards Stites. Jim Clampit, a former sheriff’s deputy, said that he attended Stites’s funeral and heard Fennell say to her body inside the casket, “something along the lines of, ‘you got what you deserved’”. Last month, Arthur Snow, who said he became a leader in a white supremacist gang, the Aryan Brotherhood, stated in a sworn affidavit that he met Fennell in prison in 2010 and remembers him “talking about his ex-fiancee with a lot of hatred and resentment” and saying, “I had to kill my nigger-loving fiancee”. Rodrick Reed said that his brother’s situation should draw attention to systemic injustices in the capital punishment system: “There’s … other Rodney Reeds out there that’s going through similar situations. We have to, as a people, stand up and say enough is enough.”

15 November 2019 :

A Tarrant County jury sentenced Hector Acosta, 30, native of Mexico, to the death penalty for the September 2017 murders of Erick Zelaya, 26, and 17-year-old Iris Chirinos. Acosta, a self-proclaimed sicario (“hitman”) for the Cartel Del Noreste shot his then-roommate Zelaya and his girlfriend Chirinos in their sleep, before mutilating their bodies with a machete and 2-by-4. He decapitated Zelaya, and after dumping the bodies in a shallow grave in his backyard, he rode a bicycle through the neighborhood to a walking trail a few blocks away where he left Zelaya’s head along with a sign threatening future violence. Acosta claimed to have killed the couple in retaliation for a past drive-by incident in which he believed Zelaya had been a participant. Acosta-Ojeda is also charged with the robbery and killing of 34-year-old Triston Ray Algiene in July 2017. A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Acosta allegedly showed an interest in gang life from as early as age 7. He participated in multiple gangs in both Mexico and Houston before joining the Cartel Del Noreste for which he claimed to have performed kidnappings, tortures and other murders.

15 November 2019 :

Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed files petition saying 7 new witnesses can exonerate him. Lawyers for Rodney Reed, 51, Black, set to be executed next week, said in a legal filing that testimony from seven new witnesses help to prove his innocence. Monday's filing with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, provided to CNN by the Innocence Project, lists 7 witnesses who have provided testimony that the court has not seen before -- four of whom provided sworn affidavits within the past few days. Reed was sentenced to death on May 29, 1998 in Bastrop County for the April 23, 1996 assault, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. But Reed and attorneys with the Innocence Project say they have evidence that exonerates him and instead implicates Stites' fiancé at the time, Jimmy Fennell, who was a police officer. The case has drawn the attention of lawmakers, religious leaders and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West and Rihanna, and more than 2.8 million people have signed a petition on freerodneyreed.com asking Gov. Greg Abbott to halt the execution, scheduled for November 20. The new witness affidavits, which come from neighbors, colleagues, and associates of Stites and Fennell, paint their relationship as abusive and difficult. There is also additional testimony that underscores the assertion that Stites was engaged in an affair with Reed. One witness attested that Fennell said something like, "You got what you deserved" while looking at Stites' body at her funeral service. The new testimony aims to refute the prosecution's portrayal of Fennell and Stites as a happy couple eagerly anticipating their upcoming wedding and further cast Fennell as a potential suspect in his fiancée's murder. Fennell was never charged in her death. His attorney, Robert Phillips, said his client denies any involvement in Stites' death, and he said the stories were lacking in credibility. "There's no evidence that's worthy of presenting even to a grand jury that Jimmy Fennell was somehow involved," Phillips said. The Innocence Project leads Reed's defense. The lead prosecutor for Reed's case maintains he is guilty and has said that DNA evidence from Stites' body proves it. "A large amount of credible evidence, including irrefutable DNA evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and the pattern Rodney Reed followed in committing his other sexual assaults, show beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped and murdered Stacey Stites," Lisa Tanner said. But Reed's attorneys say his DNA was on Stites' body because they were engaged in a consensual sexual relationship. The Innocence Project noted that Reed, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury. The group also says the murder weapon was never tested for DNA evidence and that forensic experts admitted to errors in their testimony, and that a former prison inmate claims someone else confessed to the murder that sent Reed to prison. Bryce Benjet, a senior staff attorney with the Innocence Project, called the case a "miscarriage of justice". In 2008, Fennell pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a person in custody while he was an officer in Georgetown, Texas. A woman he detained when he was responding to a domestic dispute call accused him of rape. He was sentenced to 10 years. A former inmate who served time with Fennell said in an affidavit filed this month that Fennell confessed to killing Stites. "Jimmy said his fiancée had been sleeping around with a black man behind his back," wrote Arthur Snow Jr., who was serving a sentence for forgery in a Texas prison in 2010, in the affidavit. "Toward the end of the conversation Jimmy said confidently, 'I had to kill my n*****- loving fiancée,'" he wrote. To this day, the murder weapon that was found near Stites’ body and matched the marks around her neck has never been tested for DNA evidence, though prosecutors say that it has been handled by so many people—from law enforcement to curious members of the jury—that such testing would be a waste of time. Aside from the sperm recovered from Stites’ body, there is no DNA evidence, fingerprints, hairs, or footprints that point to Reed at the abandoned truck or where Stites’ body was found. Prosecutors say that the sperm is all they need to prove Reed killed Stites. What happens now? Reed is one of 215 inmates currently on death row in Texas, which leads the nation in executions. During Governor Abbott’s five-year tenure, he has stopped only one execution out of 47, converting a death sentence to life in prison in 2018. As calls to halt Reed’s execution continue to come in by the day, it’s unclear whether Reed will become the second. The governor can also delay an execution for 30 days. With just one week until his execution, Reed is gaining new supporters every day. In an interview with NBC News just yesterday, Stites’ cousin Heather Stobbs said Reed deserves a chance to clear his name. “You can’t put somebody to death with all these questions,” she said. “The amount of questions coming out on a daily basis is unbelievable—and that’s what I find crazy.”

12 November 2019 :

After Being Reversed Twice, Texas Appeals Court Takes Bobby James Moore Off Death Row. After being reversed twice by the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has resentenced intellectually disabled death-row prisoner Bobby James Moore to life in prison. In a three-page decision issued on November 6, 2019, 39 years after Moore was sentenced to death in Houston for a 1980 murder during a supermarket robbery, the CCA conceded that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that “Moore … is a person with intellectual disability.” Given that determination, the CCA wrote, “there is nothing left for us to do but to implement the Supreme Court’s decision.” The CCA had been repeatedly criticized in the past for allowing the execution of intellectually disabled prisoners despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia that the practice constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In March 2017, in Moore’s case, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s use of a set of lay stereotypes to evaluate intellectual disability in death penalty cases as an unscientific “invention … untied to any acknowledged source” that lacked support from “any authority, medical or judicial.” The Court wrote that Texas’s “outlier” approach, “by design and in operation, … creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed.” Adopting a non-scientific standard for evaluating whether a defendant or prisoner was exempted from the death penalty because of intellectual disability. The Court returned Moore’s case to the CCA with directions to reconsider his claim based upon prevailing clinical standards for assessing intellectual disability. At that time, Harris County prosecutors agreed with Moore’s lawyers and mental health advocacy organizations that Moore meets the medically established criteria for intellectual disability and therefore could not be executed. Nonetheless, the CCA again ruled against Moore. Three judges dissented, cataloguing the numerous groups that had concluded Moore satisfied the medical criteria for intellectual disability. They wrote: “There is only one outlier in this group that concludes that applicant is ineligible for execution due to his intellectual disability, but unfortunately for applicant, at this juncture, it is the only one that matters. Today, in solitude, a majority of this Court holds that applicant is not intellectually disabled, and it denies his application for habeas relief.” In February 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court again reversed, criticizing the CCA for relying upon the same improper lay stereotypes and committing many of the same errors that had led the Court to overturn the CCA’s prior decision in the case. The Justices independently reviewed the evidence, concluded that Moore met the criteria for intellectual disability, and returned the case to the Texas courts. The CCA wrote that the Supreme Court’s conclusion that Moore is intellectually disabled “is determinative.… Accordingly, we reform Applicant’s sentence of death to a sentence of life imprisonment.” Moore’s defense team expressed pleasure at the court’s ruling. “We greatly appreciate that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has implemented the Supreme Court decision and has ensured that justice is done regarding the inappropriateness of the death penalty for Bobby Moore,” Cliff Sloan wrote in a statement. Because Moore was sentenced to death in 1980 — before the punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole was enacted and prisoners were eligible for parole after 20 years — he will automatically be eligible for parole.

17 October 2019 :

A Harris County jury sentenced Ronald Lee Haskell, 39, White, to death in the fatal shooting of 6 members of his ex-wife's family in 2014. Prosecutors say Haskell traveled from California to Texas on a mission to kill anybody who helped his ex-wife, Melannie Lyon. The couple had recently divorced after more than a decades-long abusive relationship. On July 9, 2014, he disguised himself as a FedEx delivery driver and made his way into the Stay residence in Spring, Texas. There, prosecutors say he held 5 of the Stay children hostage at gunpoint until the parents, Katie and Stephen Stay, arrived, forced them all to the ground, and shot them 1-by-1. Katie, who was Lyon's sister, Stephen, and 4 of their 5 children; 4-year-old Zach, 7-year-old Rebecca, 9-year-old Emily, and 13-year-old Bryan, were killed. The 5th child, then-14-year-old Cassidy Stay, survived the shooting despite being shot in the head by playing dead. Now 20, she testified in the case against Haskell. After the fatal shooting at the Stay residence, Haskell had reloaded his gun at started for Lyon's parents and brother's residences — but was stopped and arrested before arriving. Haskell's defense attorney's argued he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

01 August 2019 :

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturns Melissa Elizabeth Lucio’s Conviction in child murder case that may have been an accidental death. Lucio, now 51, Hispanic, was sentenced to death in Cameron County on July 9, 2008 (see) for killing her 2-year-old daughter Mariah Alvarez. The girl died from blunt force trauma injuries on Feb. 17, 2007. Citing trial court interference in her right to present a defense, a federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Texas mother who was sentenced to death on charges that she had murdered her two-year-old daughter. In an unpublished, unsigned opinion issued on July 29, 2019, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that trial court rulings that blocked Lucio from calling an expert witness to challenge the reliability of statements she gave to police violated Lucio’s right to present a “complete defense.” The appeals court reversed a federal district court decision that had upheld Lucio’s conviction and death sentence and returned the case to the lower court to grant Lucio a new trial. The prosecution alleged that Lucia had physically abused her daughter, Mariah, over a period of time and that the child had been beaten to death by her mother. Lucia’s lawyers contested the cause of death, presenting expert testimony from a neurosurgeon that Mariah may instead have died from head trauma caused by falling down a flight of stairs. The primary evidence implicating Lucio was a recording of statements she made to police during lengthy interrogation the night her daughter died. During that interrogation, Lucio admitted to spanking Mariah, but denied ever having abused her. Late into the night, after hours of continuous interrogation, Texas Ranger Victor Escalon pressured Lucio to say more. She responded with: “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m responsible for it.” When Escalon later asked her about specific bruises on her daughter’s body, Lucio said, “I guess I did it. I guess I did it.” The prosecution characterized Lucio’s interrogation as evidence that she had abused her daughter, and therefore must have killed her. Lucio’s lawyers sought to present testimony from a psychologist to explain the coercive effect of the police interrogation on Lucio, whom Dr. John Pinkerman described as a “battered woman” who “takes blame for everything that goes on in the family.” The trial court barred Pinkerman from testifying, asserting that his testimony was irrelevant because Lucio had “denied ever having anything to do with the killing of the child.” The Fifth Circuit rejected the factual and legal basis for the trial court’s finding, holding that the exclusion of the evidence was “of such a magnitude or so egregious that it rendered the trial fundamentally unfair.” The appeals court found that Pinkerman’s testimony would have provided important context for Lucio’s interrogation and possibly caused jurors to doubt its reliability. “If the interrogation statement is taken away—or its validity is undermined—then the State’s case becomes much more tenuous,” the court wrote. “A reasonable juror would have much less reason to infer that Lucio—rather than her husband, Roberto Antonio Alvarez, other children, or Mariah herself—caused Mariah’s injuries, much less her fatal head injury. To the extent that there was evidence beyond Lucio’s statement that implicated her—such as opportunity as Mariah’s primary caretaker—it pales in comparison to the force of an apparent confession of abuse.” The Fifth Circuit also found that the trial court’s reasoning unpersuasive, “The exclusion bears the hallmark sign of arbitrariness: complete irrationality,” the appeals panel wrote. “The state trial court asserted that Pinkerman’s testimony’s casting doubt on the veracity of the interrogation statement was not relevant because Lucio did not admit she struck the fatal blow. But the State’s argument that Lucio struck the fatal blow relied on an inference from the statements that she abused Mariah. To undercut the State’s premise (i.e., Lucio abused Mariah) is to undercut its conclusion (i.e., Lucio killed Mariah).” Several people have been exonerated from death row after being wrongfully convicted of killing children. In at least three of those cases, evidence suggests that no crime occurred; the children died of medical conditions or accidents, not homicide. Sabrina Butler was convicted and sentenced to death in Mississippi in 1990 for the death of her nine-month-old son. The baby stopped breathing, and resuscitation attempts left bruises that led police to accuse Butler of child abuse. Medical evidence indicated that the cause of death was likely cystic kidney disease or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Butler’s conviction in 1992. Rodricus Crawford was convicted and sentenced to death in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, on charges that he had smothered his infant son. Medical experts later provided evidence that the pathologist who performed the autopsy missed evidence of sepsis in the blood and pneumonia in both lungs. Crawford was exonerated in 2017. Vicente Benavides was exonerated in April 2018 after 26 years on California’s death row, wrongly convicted of raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter. The California Supreme Court found that his conviction was the product of “extensive,” “pervasive,” “impactful,” and “false” forensic testimony. Medical evidence showed that the girl had never been sexually assaulted and may actually have died from being hit by a car.

03 July 2019 :

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts has denied compensation to Alfred Dewayne Brown who served 12 years on death row for a murder prosecutors and a judge have said he didn't commit. A judge had ruled Brown, at the request of Harris County prosecutors, innocent last month of the 2003 slaying of a Houston police officer. Brown had been convicted and condemned in 2005 for Officer Charles Clark death during a robbery of a check-cashing store. Officials had said Brown is entitled to almost $2 million under state law. However, the Houston Chronicle reports the state comptroller's office offers little insight to the reason for its denial of compensation. Brown's attorney, Neal Manne, says he'll ask the comptroller to reconsider. If nothing results, he can appeal to the Texas Supreme Court.

04 July 2019 :

A Nueces County jury sentenced Gary David Green (56, White) to death in connection with the October 2, 2013 shooting death of Upton County deputy Billy Kennedy (White) at a Stripes convenience store in McCamey. The trial was moved from West Texas because of a change of venue.  Green was arrested in October 2013. His card was declined at the store and he demanded free gas. The man was approached by Kennedy and another deputy, who ran a check on the vehicle's license plate and discovered it was stolen.

11 June 2019 :

A special prosecutor in Harris County, John Raley, has filed a complaint with the Texas State Bar Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel against former Assistant District Attorney Daniel Rizzo, alleging that Rizzo intentionally concealed exculpatory evidence crucial to the exoneration of former death-row prisoner Alfred Dewayne Brown. Brown was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for a robbery murder in which a store clerk and responding police officer were shot to death. Brown claimed that phone records would show he was at his girlfriend’s apartment at the time of the murder. Rizzo withheld the records from the defense, then abused grand jury proceedings to jail Brown’s girlfriend until she agreed to implicate Brown. Brown was exonerated in 2015 after the phone records came to light. An investigation by Special Prosecutor John Raley later led to an official declaration that Brown is “actually innocent.” In early June 2019, Raley filed what the Houston Chronicle described as a “scathing grievance” with the Texas state bar alleging that “Rizzo was aware of exculpatory evidence and chose not to produce it to the defense and the court.“ He accused Rizzo of engaging in “significant misconduct” by “withholding from the court and defense counsel evidence likely to acquit Brown and then pressing forward in seeking the death penalty.” Raley said “Mr. Rizzo’s misconduct in the Brown case raises substantial questions regarding his honesty, trustworthiness, and fitness to be a lawyer. ... Mr. Brown, an innocent man, spent nearly 12 years on death row because of the misconduct of Daniel Rizzo.” As Special Prosecutor, Raley issued a report — commissioned by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office —advocating for Brown’s exoneration. The report, issued in March 2019 after more than 1,000 hours of investigation into Brown’s case, found “by clear and convincing evidence, that no reasonable juror would fail to have a reasonable doubt about whether Brown is guilty of murder. Therefore his case meets the legal definition of ‘actual innocence.’” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg and Harris County District Court Judge George Powell subsequently made official declarations of Brown’s “actual innocence,” paving the way for Brown to receive state compensation for the years in which he was wrongfully imprisoned. Raley’s report documented that Rizzo concealed “crucial evidence” of phone records that supported Brown’s alibi that he had been at his girlfriend’s apartment at the time of his alleged crime. A copy of the records were discovered by police officer Breck McDaniel in his garage during Brown’s appeals. In 2003, in preparation for Brown’s trial, Officer McDaniel obtained the phone records for Brown’s girlfriend’s apartment in an effort to disprove Brown’s alibi. Instead, the records showed that Brown had, as he claimed, called his girlfriend at work at a time that made it impossible for him to have been involved in the murder of Houston Police Officer Charles Clark. McDaniel sent an email to Rizzo informing him of the phone records. When that email was uncovered in 2018, District Attorney Kim Ogg filed a Bar complaint against Rizzo. Rizzo claimed he never read the email and had not been aware of the records. Raley’s complaint rejected Rizzo’s version of events, explaining that, while Rizzo had not replied to the email, he made a change to a subpoena that McDaniel had requested, demonstrating that he in fact read the email.

04 June 2019 :

Marlin Enos Nelson gets life sentences. Former death row inmate Nelson, 50, White, a former Charles Manson follower linked to a string of gay hate crimes in the 1980s won an appeal and has been let off death row, but under a new plea deal will still spend the rest of his life behind bars. Nelson was originally sentenced to death in Harris County in August 1988 for the 1987 murder of James Howard who picked him up for sex, according to court records. But in 2013 Nelson's sentence has been overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because of flawed jury instructions at his 1988 trial. The judges overturned his punishment while leaving in place the guilty verdict. Since life without parole wasn’t an option in Texas when Nelson was first sent to death row, prosecutors had to stack a variety of charges — including escape, cocaine possession and aggravated robbery — to ensure that he would he would stay behind bars forever and not have a shot at parole. In recent weeks, a Harris County criminal court judge approved a plea deal that includes a life sentence for the original slaying, plus 10 years, 20 years and a second life sentence for a trio of other decades-old crimes. The stacked sentences will keep him behind bars for life.

28 May 2019 :

Despite bipartisan support, bill tackling intellectual disability in death penalty cases fails----Negotiators in the House and Senate couldn't come to an agreement on a bill addressing how Texas handles capital murder defendants who may be intellectually disabled. The House had adopted a bill (HB 1139) that defined intellectual disability in accordance with contemporary diagnostic criteria and had provided for a pretrial judicial determination of whether a defendant was ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. The bill passed in committee on March 25. HB 1139 passed out of the Texas House in an 102-37 vote on April 30, and was supported by members of both parties. On May 22, the Texas Senate adopted a substitute version (SB 418) that eliminated the pretrial judicial determination. The House refused to concur in the Senate amendments, and a conference committee failed in attempts to resolve the differences between the two versions of the bill. The legislative session (86th Regular Session) ends Monday, May 27. Another bill addressing mental illness (HB 1936) won approval in the House (see May 9), but wasn't taken up by the Senate.

27 May 2019 :

Senate Bill 719, also known as Lauren’s Law, passed House and Senate and would head to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed into law. The parents of 13-year-old Lauren Landavazo, who was shot and killed in 2016, have been behind it since she was murdered. Kody Lott shot and killed the girl while she was walking home from school on Sept. 2, 2016. Lott was sentenced to life in prison, but by state law, he will be eligible for parole after he has served 30 calendar years. But if "Lauren's Law" gets signed into law, a person charged with capital murder of a someone under the age of 15 will no longer be eligible for parole. The bill was passed in the Senate and then went to the House. While in committee, the death penalty punishment portion of the bill was removed before being passed by the House on May 21 in a 132 yeas to 8 nays vote. Since SB 719 originated in the Senate through Pat Fallon (R) District 30, the bill went back to the Senate, where it was approved on May 23.

21 May 2019 :

Texas’ House of Representatives passed HB 1936 that would ban the execution of severely mentally ill inmates. Under the measure, proposed by Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, defendants who have active psychotic symptoms of certain mental illnesses at the time of the crime would be ineligible for capital punishment. It passed by a vote of 77-66, with all 64 democrats voting in favor, together with 13 Republicans. All the 66 “nay” votes came from Republicans.

06 May 2019 :

Harris County judge George Powell has signed an order declaring death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown, now 37, Black, 'actually innocent.' The order makes Brown, who was exonerated in 2015, eligible for compensation by the state of Texas. The move could clear the way to nearly $2 million in state compensation for the time Brown spent wrongfully imprisoned (12 years) for the 2003 slaying of Houston Police Officer Charles Clark. For the Brown case see also HoC March 1, 2019, June 8 and 10, 2015, November 5, 2014, October 25, 2005.

02 May 2019 :

Texas will no longer share death row inmate's final statements. Prison officials on Tuesday abruptly halted the practice of sharing death row inmate's final written statements after a lawmaker expressed outrage over the state relaying the last words of an avowed racist executed for the 1998 dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr. It marks the second recent change to execution-day procedures in the nation's busiest death chamber. Earlier this month, Texas also stopped letting clergy inside after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of a man who wanted his Buddhist spiritual adviser with him. State Sen. John Whitmire had chastised prison officials Monday for reading John William King's final written statement last week after he was executed for Byrd's killing. "If a death row inmate has something to say to the public or victims, let him or her say it when they are strapped to the gurney," Whitmire wrote in a letter to prison officials. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice swiftly responded, and within 24 hours told Whitmire it would change the policy to only publicly relay verbal comments made in the execution chamber. Any written statements by the condemned will now be "inventoried with their belongings" after they are executed, said Bryan Collier, the agency's executive director. Whitmire has served nearly 40 years in the Texas Senate and is one of the most powerful lawmakers over the criminal justice system. In 2011, the Houston Democrat also spurred the prison system to do away with allowing inmates to pick their final meals after Whitmire took issue with one inmate's extensive request. King, who was white, said "no" when asked by a warden in the death chamber on April 25 whether he had any last words before being executed. Afterward, prison officials released a statement prepared by King: "Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment." Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said changing longstanding practices shouldn't be influenced by one person and defended letting the condemned relay their last words on paper if they choose. "None of us know what our state of mind or composure is going to be as we face imminent death," she said. "It's another kind of punitive measure at a time when they are being put to death by our state."

14 April 2019 :

Texas Supreme Court rules supplier of death penalty drug can remain secret. The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that suppliers of drugs used for execution can remain secret. The court backed the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and overturned a lower court’s ruling that said the state must release the name of the drug supplier. The court agreed with the state’s criminal justice department that revealing the name of the company that supplied drugs for lethal injection executions in 2014 could put the company in danger. "We conclude, based on the evidence in the record, that disclosing the source's identity would create a substantial threat of physical harm to the source's employees and others, and therefore need not be disclosed,” the court said. In 2014, a group of death row inmates sued the state, seeking the identity of the drug supplier, arguing that knowing the source of the drugs could prevent botched executions. A lower court’s decision, which the state then appealed, sided with the inmates. The court’s Friday opinion cited past threats to execution drug suppliers, including one from a professor telling a pharmacy to “beef up” security. That letter also made reference to the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb attack by Timothy McVeigh. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded the ruling, calling it “necessary” for the drug suppliers to remain anonymous. “It is necessary to withhold the identities of these businesses and their employees from public disclosure to ensure their physical safety,” Paxton said in a statement. “The voters of Texas have expressed their judgment that the death penalty is necessary, and this decision preserves Texas’ ability to carry out executions mandated by state law.”

21 May 2019 :

The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee passed 5-3 HB 1936 that would ban the execution of severely mentally ill inmates. Under the measure, proposed by Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, defendants who have active psychotic symptoms of certain mental illnesses at the time of the crime would be ineligible for capital punishment.

05 April 2019 :

Texas bars all spiritual advisers from death chambers after Supreme Court order. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice will bar chaplains, ministers and spiritual advisers from execution chambers in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling last week that halted the execution of an inmate who sought to have his Buddhist spiritual adviser in the death chamber. The move is the latest step in a controversy that pit the religious liberty concerns of death row inmates against security concerns of prisons. The justices agreed to stay Patrick Henry Murphy's execution, but weeks earlier, had denied a similar request from an inmate in Alabama. Murphy's initial request had been denied by Texas because officials said for security reasons only prison employees were allowed into the chamber, and the prison only employed Christian and Muslim advisers. Lawyers for Murphy challenged the policy arguing that it violated Murphy's religious liberty rights. The Supreme Court stepped in and put the execution on hold. In a statement released Wednesday, the state now says that, "effective Immediately," the protocol now only allows security personnel in the execution chamber. "Chaplains and Ministers/Spiritual Advisors designated by the offender may observe the execution only from the witness rooms," the state says. When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Murphy, only Justice Brett Kavanaugh detailed his thinking in the brief order. He said that the government "may not discriminate against religion generally or against particular religious denominations." Kavanaugh also said that states had two options going forward: allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room or allow inmates to have a religious adviser, including a state-employed chaplain, only in the viewing room, not the execution room. "What the State may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room," he wrote. Murphy's planned execution has not been rescheduled.

02 April 2019 :

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a stay of execution to Patrick Murphy "pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless Texas permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution." On Feb. 7 (see) in Alabama a man, Dominique Ray, was executed after the U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, lifted a federal appeals court stay based on the inmate’s request to have his Muslim spiritual adviser at his side.

21 March 2019 :

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot announced Tuesday he no longer believes that Juan Lizcano should be executed for his crime. Lizcano, now 42, Hispanic, should instead spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, Creuzot said. Lizcano was sentenced to death in Dallas County (see November 1, 2007) for murdering a Dallas police officer, Brian Jackson, in November 2005. The change in position follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in February (see February 19, 2019) that stopped Texas from executing another intellectually disabled murderer (Bobby James Moore), saying the state's judgment of such disabilities relies on inaccurate stereotypes. The DA's office had opposed a reduced sentence for Lizcano before Creuzot took office Jan. 1. Lizcano does not have a scheduled execution date. Attorneys for Lizcano, argued in his November 2007 trial that he should not face the death penalty because of his intellectual disabilities. Lizcano's trial attorney, Brook Busbee, said Tuesday that she always thought her client would end up with a life sentence. She said there was never any evidence to show he wasn't mentally disabled. "I was frustrated during the trial because everybody knew the man was intellectually disabled and didn't care," Busbee said. At Lizcano's trial, Busbee and attorney Juan Sanchez presented evidence that he grew up intellectually slow and extremely poor in a Mexican village. He also scored low on IQ tests. He was promoted to 6th grade at age 15 simply because he was too old to remain in elementary school. Creuzot's decision, Busbee said, "was the right thing to do." The district attorney at the time, Craig Watkins, who led the state in death-penalty convictions during his tenure, convinced the jury that Lizcano should pay with his life for fatally shooting 28-year-old Officer Brian Jackson, who was responding to a late-night domestic violence call at the home of Lizcano's ex-girlfriend. The former girlfriend called 911 twice to report Lizcano had threatened her with a gun. Jackson was searching for Lizcano when Lizcano shot him. Lizcano moved to the U.S. from Mexico illegally in 2000.

05 March 2019 :

Alfred Dewayne Brown Declared Actually Innocent. Death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown was declared “actually innocent” by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg on March 1, 2019, making Brown eligible for state compensation for the time he spent wrongfully imprisoned on Texas’ death row. “My obligation as an advocate is not to tell people what they want to hear but to tell them the truth,” Ogg said at a press conference. “Alfred Brown was wrongfully convicted through prosecutorial misconduct.” Brown was freed in 2015, ten years after he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of a Houston police officer and a store clerk during a robbery. Until the declaration by Ogg, Brown was ineligible for compensation because Texas law requires that, if a prisoner is exonerated by the dismissal of charges against them, they cannot receive compensation unless the prosecutor says in an affidavit that he or she “believes that the defendant is actually innocent of the crime for which the person was sentenced.” Brown’s exoneration gained momentum following the discovery of exculpatory phone records in the garage of a Houston police officer in 2013 that corroborated Brown’s claim that he was at his girlfriend’s apartment just minutes before the killings took place and could not possibly have been at murder scene at the time of the killings. Prosecutor Daniel Rizzo claimed that the records had been accidentally misplaced, rather than intentionally withheld. But in 2018, Ogg’s office discovered an email showing that Rizzo knew about the records well before Brown’s trial. A timeline of the case showed that Rizzo’s investigator had sought out the records in an attempt to rebut grand jury testimony by Brown’s girlfriend that he spoke to her by phone from her apartment shortly before the murders. Rizzo then threatened her with prosecution and jailed her until she changed her testimony. “It is impossible to examine the conviction of Alfred Dewayne Brown without confronting prosecutorial misconduct,” wrote special prosecutor John Raley, who conducted more than 1,000 hours of investigation into Brown’s case and produced the report that led to Ogg’s actual innocence declaration. “ADA Daniel Rizzo presided over a Grand Jury that abusively manipulated witnesses to supply evidence for a chosen narrative. He was provided notice of the existence and meaning of exculpatory evidence, failed to produce it to the defense and avoided it during trial. Further investigation of his conduct is warranted.” In his report, Raley concluded, “By clear and convincing evidence, no reasonable juror would fail to have a reasonable doubt about whether Brown is guilty of murder. Therefore his case meets the legal definition of ‘actual innocence.’” Lawyers who had worked on Brown’s appeals lauded the announcement. Attorney Casey Kaplan said, “The consonant bell of justice rings loudly today and shares what Alfred Brown’s family, supporters and attorneys have known for over a decade — that he is actually innocent. It is a good day.” Brian Stolarz, the lead attorney who secured Brown’s exoneration, said, “We are heartened that he found what we have known all along: Dewayne Brown is actually innocent and was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. We commend the District Attorney’s commitment to the truth and ensuring that miscarriages of justice like this never happen again in Harris County.” Houston’s police union expressed anger at the decision, holding a separate press conference immediately after Ogg’s. Union president Joe Gamaldi urged the police department to bring the case back to a grand jury.

21 February 2019 :

U.S. Supreme Court Again Reverses Texas Court’s Rejection of Intellectual Disability Claim for Bobby James Moore. Overturning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the second time, the United States Supreme Court ruled on February 19, 2019, that Texas death-row prisoner Bobby James Moore is intellectually disabled and may not be executed. In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the latest Texas appeals court decision (see JUNE 6, 2018) that would have allowed Moore’s execution, saying the state court had relied on many of the same improper lay stereotypes and committed many of the same errors that had led the Justices two years ago (see Moore v. Texas, MARCH 28, 2017) to strike down Texas’s “outlier” approach to determining intellectual disability. The Court said that the Texas ruling, “when taken as a whole and when read in the light both of our prior opinion and the trial court record, rests upon analysis too much of which too closely resembles what we previously found improper.” This decision marked the second time the Supreme Court had reversed a Court of Criminal Appeals denial of Moore’s intellectual disability claim. In 2014, a Texas trial court, applying prevailing clinical standards, found that Moore was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty under the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) overturned that decision, saying Moore had not satisfied a Texas-specific standard called the “Briseño factors” (named after the Texas court decision that announced them). In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the use of these factors, calling them an unscientific “invention” of the TCCA that was “untied to any acknowledged source” and lacked support from “any authority, medical or judicial.” The Court criticized the TCCA’s reliance upon “lay stereotypes” about what people with intellectual disability can and cannot do and its misplaced focus on things Moore was able to do in a structured prison setting instead of considering his life history of impairments in daily adaptive functioning, and directed the TCCA to reconsider the issue applying appropriate diagnostic standards. When the case returned to the state courts, numerous groups, including the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, filed friend-of-the-court briefs asserting that Moore met the prevailing medical definitions of intellectual disability. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office agreed with Moore and conceded that his death sentence should be vacated. Nonetheless, over the sharp dissent of three judges, the TCCA again upheld Moore’s death sentence. With the backing of the mental health professional associations, Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver, and a group of prominent conservative leaders who described the TCCA’s flouting of the 2017 Supreme Court ruling as “inimical to the rule of law,” Moore again asked the Supreme Court to intervene. When Harris County prosecutors again agreed that Moore was entitled to relief, the Texas Attorney General’s office attempted to intervene in the case to defend the TCCA’s ruling. The Supreme Court reversed, writing: “We … agree with Moore and the prosecutor that, on the basis of the trial court record, Moore has shown he is a person with intellectual disability.” Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dissented, accusing the majority of improperly engaging in factfinding and failing to provide clarity to lower courts. Cliff Sloan, a lawyer representing Moore, praised the ruling: “We greatly appreciate today’s important ruling from the Supreme Court, and we are very pleased that justice will be done for Bobby Moore.” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg also released a statement: “The Harris County District Attorney’s Office disagreed with our state’s highest court and the attorney general to stand for Justice in this case. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed."

25 February 2019 :

After being reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in October 2017 for applying an unconstitutional standard (on September 12, 2016) in rejecting Texas death-row prisoner, Obie Weathers's claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has again denied relief to Weathers. The circuit court ruled that that Moore v. Texas, which declared the Texas standard unconstitutional, does not apply retroactively. Weathers, 37, Black, was sentenced to death in Bexar County on Sept. 13, 2001 in the Feb. 4, 2000 robbery and murder of Ted Church, 63, a bartender.

03 September 2019 :

State District Judge Bob Gill sentenced Billy Jack Crutsinger, 48, White, to death following a Sept. 30 jury's recommendation. He was charged, and actually he admitted, of killing  89-year-old Pearl “R.D”. Magouirk and her 71-year-old daughter, Patricia “Pat” Syren, on April 6, 2003.