13 June 2020 :
State drops death penalty in retrial of Albert Love. Albert Love, who has languished in the McLennan County Jail 3 years while waiting for his capital murder retrial, no longer faces the death penalty, McLennan County District Attorney Barry Johnson confirmed Monday. Love, a former death row inmate, has been in the McLennan County Jail since May 2017, 5 months after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his capital murder conviction and death sentence in the March 2011 shooting deaths of Keenan Hubert, 20, and Tyus Sneed, 17. Since his return to McLennan County, Love has rejected offers from prosecutors to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole while they continued to hang the threat of death over his head. Johnson said his office has changed course in Love's case and will not seek the death penalty against Love, who now faces life without parole if convicted a 2nd time. No trial date has been set in the case, but prosecutors and court officials say he won't be tried again before fall 2021. Johnson explained his reasons for dropping the pursuit of the death penalty in an interview Monday. "It is just one of those decisions where I as district attorney realize that there are several pending death cases and because of the facts of his case, we decided not to spend the million and a half dollars it would take to get a death penalty verdict on him," Johnson said. "These are tough decisions, but from a practical standpoint, with the legislation and case law that now defines the death penalty, in my opinion, they have gone a long way in legislating the death penalty out of our criminal justice system. So we just have to be careful about the cases that we spend that kind of money on. And if you spend that kind of money, you are still talking about a 15-year appellate case even if you are able to get the death penalty," Johnson said.
