A “Texas Seven” escapee who filed an appeal alleging his trial judge was racist and anti-Semitic is now scheduled for execution this year, despite two pending legal claims still winding through the courts.
Dallas County Judge Lela Mays on Wednesday approved an Oct. 10 death date for Randy Halprin, a Jewish prisoner who in May accused ex-Judge Vickers Cunningham of routinely using obscenity-laced language and racial slurs to describe Jewish and minority defendants.
“In case after case, the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly and consistently enforced defendants’ constitutional right to a judge free of bias,” defense attorney Tivon Schardl said Monday in a statement. “Yet, Mr. Halprin’s trial judge, who presided over the death penalty trial, made critical decisions about what evidence the jury would hear, and sentenced Mr. Halprin to die, was biased against Mr. Halprin, referring to him as a ‘f****n’ Jew’ and a ‘G*****n k**e.’”
Now 41, Halprin was originally sent to death row for his role in a 2000 prison escape and crime spree that left dead Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins. That December, Halprin and six other men took hostages and broke out of the Connally Unit south of San Antonio.
They stole a prison van, then switched it out for a getaway vehicle and fled to Houston, where they pulled off two robberies to stock up on supplies, guns and money. Afterward, they drove toward Dallas, hoping to get away from the search teams hunting for them.
On Christmas Eve, the escapees held up an Oshman’s sporting goods store in Irving - and Hawkins was the first officer who responded to the call. In a chaotic scene, five of the men started firing at the lawman.
When it was over, Hawkins lay dead in the parking lot, shot 11 times and dragged 10 feet by an SUV as the panicked prisoners fled with $70,000 and 44 guns.
Some of the men admitted to to their roles, but Halprin has consistently maintained that he never fired a shot and that he didn’t even want to bring a gun. Still, he and the other five survivors - one man killed himself before he could be captured - were sentenced to die under the controversial law of parties, a Texas statute that holds non-shooters as criminally responsible as triggermen.
After more than 15 years spent fighting his conviction and sentence, Halprin’s legal team learned of Cunningham’s alleged bias last year when he admitted to the Dallas Morning News that he’d set up a living trust that rewarded his children if they married a fellow white Christian.
“I strongly support traditional family values,” he told the paper in a video interview during his 2018 campaign for county commissioner. “If you marry a person of the opposite sex that’s Caucasian, that’s Christian, they will get a distribution.”
He lost the Republican run-off by just 25 votes. Afterward, defense investigators began interviewing people who knew him to find out more about his views toward Jewish people and minorities.
“If someone were actually African-American he would call them (N-word) and their first name,” childhood friend Tammy McKinney recounted. “It was his signature way of talking about people of color.”
The May appeal and attached statements detailed a slew of other alleged expressions of bias toward Catholics, Jews, Latinos and black people. Previously, Cunningham did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment.
In early June, even before the federal courts ruled on that appeal, the office of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot asked for the October execution date. A district attorney’s office spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for comment.
The Texas Office of the Attorney General - which represents the state instead of the district attorney once a case reaches federal appeals - last month filed a response brief both arguing that Halprin wasn’t legally entitled to relief and condemning Cunningham’s alleged bigotry.
“To be clear, the details of Cunningham’s living trust and the accounts of those who knew Cunningham regarding his bigoted statements and beliefs are troubling to say the least,” state attorneys wrote. “The Attorney General’s Office does not condone or excuse Cunningham’s creation of his living trust, and the racist and religiously-bigoted statements he is alleged to have made are abhorrent.”
Aside from Halprin, only one other Texas 7 prisoner who’d been sentenced to die - Patrick Murphy - is still alive on death row. The others have all been executed.
Source: chron.com, Keri Blakinger, July 8, 2019
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