On April 23, a split panel of the court upheld a conviction and death sentence imposed by an all-White jury on Andre Thomas—a Black man—for killing his wife, who was White, and 2 children. Although three of the jurors who were empaneled expressed strong opposition to interracial marriage, Thomas’ defense counsel did not object to seating them. Nevertheless, the court upheld the state court’s ruling crediting the jurors’ assertions that they could be impartial and its finding that there was no evidence of racial bias. The court also rejected Thomas’ claim that counsel was ineffective for failing to move to exclude those jurors from serving on his case.
In dissent, Judge Stephen A. Higginson wrote that he “would apply clearly established Supreme Court law to forbid persons from being privileged to participate in the judicial process to make life or death judgment about brutal murders involving interracial marriage and offspring those jurors openly confirm they have racial bias against. The law rightly condemned this repugnancy when enacted as law by lawmakers, just as it must condemn it when we ask citizens to join us as judges.”
In a separate ruling on April 22, a circuit panel rejected Rodney Reed’s appeal of a federal district court decision denying him DNA testing on the murder weapon in his case. The court ruled that Reed’s civil rights lawsuit challenging Texas’ refusal to grant him DNA testing was untimely because he waited until the state’s appeal courts had ruled on his claim before he filed in federal court. The court ruled that Reed was on notice that his rights were being violated as soon as the trial court ruled against him and that the time to file his federal claim expired during the five years it took the state courts to decide his appeal.
On April 21, the court denied Howard Guidry permission to appeal a Texas federal district court’s dismissal of his habeas corpus petition challenging his conviction and death sentence in his 2007 retrial. The court refused to grant Guidry a certificate of appealability on his claims that the court improperly permitted testimony against him that was the fruit of the constitutional violation that overturned his 1st conviction; that prosecutors improperly struck a Black juror on the basis of race and suppressed exculpatory evidence; and that Guidry’s prior counsel had provided ineffective representation.
In an oral ruling from the bench, a trial judge of a Midland County, Texas District Court has recommended that Clinton Young receive a new trial based upon previously undisclosed evidence that Ralph Petty, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted him, was simultaneously employed by the trial judge as a law clerk in his case.
When the court issues its opinion in support of the ruling, the recommendation will be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which had directed the trial court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on the issue. The appeals court will make a final determination as to whether Mr. Young is granted a new trial.
USA Today reported in February 2021 that Petty had obtained more than 200 convictions in cases in which he worked as a prosecutor and judicial law clerk, including 21 cases in which defendants were sentenced to 50 or more years in prison.
Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, April 26, 2021
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
