That's the title of Steve Mills' article in today's Chicago Tribune. LINK
In September, the execution of Michael Richard in Texas was steeped in controversy. The state's highest criminal court shut its doors at 5 p.m. and Richard's attorneys were unable to file last-minute appeals, even though the U.S. Supreme Court had halted executions earlier that day to consider whether lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.
That was Texas' last lethal injection before the de facto moratorium on executions.
When Texas resumed executions last week, there was controversy again, with lawyers for Karl Chamberlain saying the convicted murderer was executed even though they were still taking appeals to the nation's highest court.
That the 8-month break in lethal injections in Texas was bookended by controversy comes as no surprise to observers of the nation's busiest death chamber. The state's Court of Criminal Appeals often has been criticized for how it handles death penalty cases; indeed, it was met with fresh criticism this week as it rebuffed claims from convicted killer Charles Hood, who faced execution Tuesday.
On Monday, the court ruled that Hood, who claimed the judge and prosecutor at his trial were having a romantic affair—raising questions of a conflict of interest—could not make that claim for procedural reasons.
Then on Tuesday the court ordered a judge to reinstate Hood's death warrant after another judge had withdrawn it and recused himself from the proceedings, part of a long evening of legal wrangling that ended when prison officials decided they could not execute Hood before a midnight deadline.
"Texas uniquely places a high value on volume and speed. When you care about that more than anything else, you're going to make a lot of mistakes," said David Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who represents Death Row inmates. "And the [Court of Criminal Appeals] ... behaves as if their job is to facilitate executions."
And:
In the Chamberlain case, the court was late in getting its denial to the defense lawyers. Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law school professor and attorney with the Texas Defender Service who was working on Chamberlain's case, said that the delay of more than 30 minutes — according to a timeline provided by the court — meant the lawyers could not file the Supreme Court appeal.
Levin said the lawyers told the state attorney general's office they were filing another appeal, and the practice has been that executions are not carried out until all appeals are exhausted. In this case, she said, the attorney general's office did not wait.
"The only interpretation of the events," Levin said, "is that they were so keen to see him executed that they were willing to play games to make that happen. None of it is about the merits of the case."
A spokesman for the attorney general's office said in a statement that Chamberlain's lawyers never told the office or the Supreme Court that a filing was imminent. But an e-mail to the clerk of the Supreme Court shows Levin had told the court another filing was coming. That e-mail also refers to a conversation with the attorney general's office.
Earlier coverage of the Hood case is here.
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