Legal Commentary

Texas Appeals Court Vacates Death Sentence: But What About the Affair?

By Jeralyn

In 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of Charles Hood. Curiously, they didn't do so because it came to light that the prosecutor and judge were having an affair. It was because of a jury instruction.

In September, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled Hood had waited to long to raise the issue of the affair. The Texecution again loomed.

Today, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out the death sentence, ordering a new sentencing hearing (but not a new trial.) Once again, no mention of the affair.

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[T]he decision from the State Court of Criminal Appeals did not mention the affair, focusing instead on whether jurors had been blocked from getting information that might have helped them deliver a less severe sentence.

...The new opinion, on a separate writ, focused on whether the jurors should have been able to fully consider issues like Mr. Hood’s learning disabilities, and the fact that he had been gravely injured at 3 years old when a truck backed over him, crushing his legs.

A petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking to address the conflict issue raised by the affair is pending. Last week, 21 former judges and prosecutors filed a brief supporting him-- as did 30 experts in legal ethics.

Hood's lawyers and other legal experts say today's ruling is only a partial victory:

The legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Kent S. Scheidegger, said he expected the case to lose momentum now that the death penalty was, at least temporarily, off the table.

“That will probably cause it to drop on the radar screen of newsworthiness,” Mr. Scheidegger said, and he suggested that the Supreme Court might now disregard the petitions before it on the bias issue.

If there was a conflict of that magnitude, Hood should get a new trial on guilt -- not just a new sentencing hearing.

Yesterday, The Independent took a long look at the case. The headline says it all: "The death row prisoner, the judge who sentenced him, and the prosecutor who was having sex with her."

It is the stuff if not of a television soap, then certainly a bad romance novel. Both were married and both kept their affair a secret before, during and for many years after the trial.

There is keen interest also because it is Texas that once more finds itself under scrutiny for the alleged mishandling of a capital case. It risks becoming as infamous as the "sleeping lawyer" trial of Calvin Burdine whose death penalty was overturned 10 years ago because of the failure of his court-appointed lawyer to stay awake during the proceedings. But here "sleeping lawyer" has a different connotation.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).