Texas | Death Row Inmate Gets Resentenced to Life

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan

A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released.

Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

Attorney Ben Wolff, director of the Austin-based Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, appeared in court on Jordan’s behalf with attorney Guillermina Passa and mitigation specialist Jennifer Canzano.

Jordan, 70, is a quadriplegic and suffers from intellectual disabilities — his IQ has been tested at 56 and 60 — and schizophrenia. He had a stroke in 2010 and was moved from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where other death row prisoners are housed, to a maximum security medical unit in Huntsville.

“He is unable to feed himself or properly swallow food, and requires an endoscopic gastric tube to obtain nutrition,” according to a 15-page pre-sentencing memorandum filed with the court in May. “In effect, he is blind, mute, confined to a hospital bed or chair, captive not only of his life-long mental illness and neurological disabilities, but his deteriorated physical and cerebral condition.”

Jordan remains convicted of capital murder and if he’s not approved for compassionate release, his case will go before a parole review board, which can deny him. However, because he’s no longer on death row, he could be moved to a lower-security prison that can provide better medical care than he’s been receiving, Wolff said. If he’s approved for compassionate release, he could be sent to a private hospital or nursing home.

Wolff said he doesn’t know how long it will take for Jordan to be moved to a different facility. “It could be a couple of months; it could be six months,” he said, noting that he and the other attorneys from his office will continue advocating for Jordan. “We have been in touch with his family and we’ll let them know what happened in court.”

Whether Jordan remains in prison or is released to a care provider, the state of Texas will likely pick up the tab, Wolff said. Over almost five decades of Jordan’s incarceration, Texas taxpayers have spent more than $1 million just to house him, not to mention the medical bills. Wolff said his client should be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.

“He’s 70 years old and has lots of medical ailments and neurological impairments,” Wolff said. “He’s a person who needs care. There’s a question of whether the Estelle Unit, whether he’s been for the better part of the last 16 years, is the best place for him, and I don’t think it is.”

Once Jordan’s 1978 death sentence was overturned in April, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare could have retried Jordan and again sought the death penalty but said he wouldn’t do so. The judge’s decision on Monday to resentence was essentially a formality, Wolff said, since the death penalty was off the table and life with the possibility of parole is the only other option under the law. Texas did not offer life without the possibility of parole until 2005.

Source: houstonpress.com, April Towery, June 9, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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