Texas state courts have halted the executions of 2 condemned prisoners who had been facing imminent execution dates.
On October 4, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the October 10 execution of Randy Halprin and directed a Dallas trial court to consider his claim that the religious bigotry of the judge who presided over his case denied him a fair trial before an impartial tribunal.
The previous day, a Henderson County District Court judge withdrew the death warrant that had scheduled Randall Mays to die on October 16, amid concerns that Mays may be mentally incompetent.
The twin rulings were a dramatic development in the continuing saga involving the Lone Star State’s efforts to execute 13 prisoners in the last 5 months of 2019.
A DPIC analysis of those cases found that they raised troubling questions of innocence, significantly flawed legal proceedings, junk science, and diminished culpability arising from one or more of mental illness, intellectual disability, youthfulness, and chronic exposure to trauma.
Supported by a coalition of national and local Jewish organizations, Halprin, who is Jewish, filed petitions in the state and federal courts seeking a stay of execution and a new trial based upon recently discovered evidence of his trial judge’s virulently anti-Semitic statements and beliefs. He supported his claim with affidavits from court personnel who said that his trial judge, Vickers Cunningham, disparaged Halprin as “a f***in’ Jew” and “g**damn k**e,” and made racist comments about his Latino co-defendants. One court employee said Cunningham had bragged that, during their trial, “[f]rom the w**back to the Jew, they knew they were going to die.”
Halprin’s defense team began investigating Cunningham’s possible anti-Semitic bias after learning from a report in The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that Cunningham had put provisions in his will that conditioned his children’s inheritance upon marrying a straight, white Christian.
Halprin’s current counsel, assistant federal defender Tivon Schardl, praised the state court’s decision, as “a signal that bigotry and bias are unacceptable in the criminal justice system.” “A fair trial requires an impartial judge, and Mr. Halprin did not have a fair and neutral judge when his life was at stake,” Schardl said.
Mays’ death warrant was withdrawn by Henderson County District Judge Joe Clayton after defense lawyers moved to have May declared incompetent to be executed.
The defense motion said that prison mental health personnel had recently diagnosed Mays with schizophrenia and prescribed him anti-psychotic medication. A forensic psychiatrist reported that Mays’ mental health condition has deteriorated, that he is increasingly delusional and incoherent, and that he claims the prison guards are poisoning the air vents in his cell.
Mays was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 2 county sheriff’s deputies. The competency pleading says he believes he is to be executed because he has designed a process for creating renewable energy that threatens the interests of the oil companies.
Judge Clayton wrote that he withdrew the execution date so the court could have time to “properly review all medical records submitted.”
Source:
Death Penalty Information Center, October 5, 2019
"Texas 7" member Randy Halprin wins stay of execution amid claim of anti-Semitic judge
Halprin's lawyers had requested the stay amid allegations that the judge who handled his case made racist and anti-Semitic comments during his time on the bench.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Randy Halprin on Friday, less than a week before he was to be put to death.
Halprin, one of the infamous "Texas Seven" — who were convicted in the 2000 murder of a police officer during a more than month-long prison escape — had recently argued that his trial was biased because his judge was "a racist and anti-Semitic bigot."
Halprin, who is Jewish, said in his latest appeal that former Judge Vickers Cunningham had described Halprin as “a fuckin’ Jew” and “goddamn kike” shortly after the trial. Cunningham also admitted to putting stipulations in his will that his children could only receive inheritance by marrying a straight, white Christian, as was first reported by The Dallas Morning News in 2018.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, stopped Halprin’s execution, set for next Thursday, and sent the case back to the Dallas County trial court for further review of the claims.
"A fair trial requires an impartial judge – and Mr. Halprin did not have a fair and neutral judge when his life was at stake," one of Halprin's attorneys, Tivon Schardl, said in a statement after the ruling. "We are very grateful the CCA has given Mr. Halprin the opportunity to seek a new trial, free of religious discrimination."
Cunningham did not immediately return requests for comment Friday afternoon. Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot, who did not file a response to Halprin's latest appeal, said Friday evening it was too early to determine what his office's next steps would be in the case.
Halprin, 42, was sentenced to death in 2003 in the high-profile murder of Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins on Christmas Eve 2000. Seven prisoners at a South Texas prison escaped more than a week earlier, and were robbing a sporting goods store when Hawkins arrived on scene. The 31-year-old officer was shot repeatedly and run over as the escapees fled. Halprin was found about a month later in an RV in Colorado with Larry Harper, who killed himself when police surrounded them. The other five were captured within a couple of days.
Halprin’s lawyers said in their filing they had recently learned about Cunningham’s anti-Semitic slurs, as well as calling some of his co-defendants “wetbacks.” They also claimed Cunningham said people of color would “go down” in his courtroom and that Jews “needed to be shut down.” The filings attributed the allegations to first-hand accounts. Cunningham has denied the bigoted comments in previous interviews with the Morning News.
4 of the other Texas 7 have already been executed — including at least one tried under Cunningham. Aside from Halprin, only one member, Patrick Murphy, remains alive, and he is set for execution in November. Murphy's scheduled execution in March was halted because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice would not allow a Buddhist spiritual adviser into the execution chamber with him.
Halprin’s was the 2nd Texas execution stopped by different courts in 2 days. On Thursday, a Henderson County court withdrew the execution date of Randall Mays, set for Oct. 16, to review his mental competence.
Source: The Associated Press, Juan Lozano, October 4, 2019
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but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
