The CCA's ruling in Ex Parte Hood, overturning Hood's Death Sentence, is in Adobe .pdf format.
"Death Penalty Is Thrown Out in Texas Murders," is the title of John Schwartz' report in today's New York Times.
A Texas court threw out the death sentence on Wednesday of a man whose double murder conviction gained international attention because of revelations that the judge and prosecutor had had an extramarital affair.
But the 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 prisoner, Charles D. Hood, was convicted in 1990 in the fatal shootings of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace, a couple he lived with in Plano, Tex. Mr. Hood has denied committing the murders, though he was driving Mr. Williamson’s Cadillac when he was arrested.
For much of the nearly 20 years since a jury convicted him, Mr. Hood tried to prove that the judge who presided over the case, Verla Sue Holland, and the prosecutor, Thomas S. O’Connell Jr., had an extramarital affair and that this constituted a conflict of interest. In 2008, Ms. Holland and Mr. O’Connell admitted the affair, which they said was short-lived and had ended three years before Mr. Hood’s trial.
Last September, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in the state, rejected Mr. Hood’s request for a new trial, saying he had taken too long to raise the issue. Mr. Hood appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, with briefs supporting his position filed by dozens of former judges, prosecutors and legal ethics experts. The court has not yet acted on the request.
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.
Such questions about jury instructions are an area of legal dispute that has bounced from state courts to the United States Supreme Court and back over the past 20 years. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has called the result “a dog’s breakfast of divided, conflicting, and ever-changing analyses.”
With the equivalent of a textual sigh, Judge Cathy Cochran wrote in the Texas court’s majority opinion that, “We wade once more into the murky waters” of jury instruction; and the majority ruled that Mr. Hood deserved a new hearing on the question of punishment.
Chuck Lindell writes, "Divided court tosses death sentence for Hood," for today's Austin American-Statesman.
In a case that has come to symbolize the tension between swift justice and the proper application of the death penalty, the state's highest criminal court Wednesday tossed out the death sentence for Charles Dean Hood but not because his trial judge and prosecutor were having an affair.
A bitterly divided Court of Criminal Appeals granted a new sentencing trial for Hood based on frequently shifting U.S. Supreme Court rulings on flawed jury instructions used prior to 1991.
The 5-4 decision did not affect Hood's 1990 conviction in the shooting death of two people in Plano. But in granting a new punishment phase trial, the court reversed its 2007 decision on a similar Hood appeal, prompting a sharply worded dissent that included a rare direct attack on one of the majority's judges.
Collin County prosecutors said Wednesday they were reviewing the Hood opinion but were likely to seek the death penalty again.
Hood's case became national news because he is fighting for a new trial based on the revelation — confirmed in 2008 after several years of digging by defense lawyers — that then-District Judge Verla Sue Holland had been having a secret affair with Thomas O'Connell Jr., the former Collin County district attorney who prosecuted Hood.
In a separate appeal now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Hood argues that it is unfair to be tried for any crime, let alone capital murder, in a court where the judge and chief prosecutor are romantically linked. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected that argument last year, ruling 6-3 that Hood's lawyers waited too long to raise the issue on appeal.
The case has attracted friend-of-the-court briefs from legal ethicists and former judges and prosecutors urging the high court to grant Hood a new trial in the interest of justice in death penalty cases, in which the punishment is irreversible.
And:
In its ruling Wednesday, the Texas court said Hood's jury received improper instructions over how to weigh mitigating evidence — such as learning disabilities or childhood abuse — that might have led jurors to choose a life sentence instead of capital punishment.
The opinion by Judge Cathy Cochran cited a string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the Texas jury instruction. But while the court ruled 5-4 to grant a new sentencing trial, the court ruled 4-4 on accepting Cochran's reasons for tossing out Hood's conviction. The split decision means Cochran's rationale cannot serve as precedent in future rulings about the pre-1991 jury instruction.
"Death row inmate gets new punishment hearing," is Diane Jennings' Dallas Morning News report.
The romance between now-retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and then-District Attorney Tom O'Connell had been rumored for years. But proof was elusive until 2008, when Holland and O'Connell revealed in affidavits that they had a sexual relationship before the trial and a close friendship after the romance ended.
Defense attorneys have tried repeatedly to get the Court of Criminal Appeals to address the issue, but the court has declined on procedural grounds, saying Hood waited too long to raise the issue. Instead the court agreed to re-examine the question of improper jury instructions.
In December, defense attorneys filed a petition in December asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the intimate relationship between the judge and the prosecutor violated Hood's right to due process.
Last week, dozens of legal ethicists and prominent lawyers – including former Gov. Mark White and former FBI director and federal Judge Williams Sessions – asked the court to take the case.
Prosecutors declined to comment on the petition to the Supreme Court. Their response to the court is due next month.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram carries the AP report, "Court throws out death penalty for Texas man," by Michael Graczyk.
Three of the nine judges dissented from Wednesday's majority ruling, where the court said it was wading "once more into the murky waters" of the Texas death penalty sentencing rules, where capital trial jurors are asked questions to decide whether a convicted killer should be put to death.
Hood was convicted in 1990, after the first of several precedent-setting Texas death penalty cases at the U.S. Supreme Court began refining those jury instructions but before the Texas Legislature could rewrite laws to bring instructions into high court compliance. In the interim, trial judges submitted deliberation questions, known as "special issues," to capital murder juries. Many of those death penalty sentences have since been thrown out on appeal.
And:
"This is all very awkward," Judge Cathy Cochran, writing for the majority, said. "Not only have the nine justices on the Supreme Court differed wildly in their view ... the nine judges on this court have differed in exactly the same manner."
Specifically in Hood's case, the court said the "nullification instruction" given to his jury wasn't sufficient for jurors to give "meaningful consideration and full effect to the mitigating evidence presented." That instruction, which the Supreme Court later would reject as confusing, told a jury to answer "no" to one of two special issues if it found mitigating evidence that warranted sparing a defendant's life.
At his trial, Hood's lawyers presented evidence of life-changing injuries Hood suffered as a 3-year-old when a truck backed over him. They also said he had been beaten as a child.
Appeals Court Judge Michael Keasler, joined by two colleagues in a dissent, wrote Hood's claim was late and improper.
"This is exactly the kind of behavior that the Legislature specifically sought to prohibit," Keasler said. "No 'conundrum' exists for Hood because he is simply not entitled to relief in any forum."
The Plano Star-Courier today carries, "Hood granted new punishment hearing."
In 2005, Hood challenged the instruction used in his case just prior to a scheduled execution. The Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his challenge in early 2007, ruling that he was required to raise the claim in an earlier challenge to his conviction and sentence. Today, the court reconsidered its 2007 decision, determined that Hood was not required to raise the claim in an earlier challenge, and awarded him a new punishment trial.
The Independent has, "Death penalty thrown out over sex scandal," written by David Usborne, a follow-up on a report in yesterday's edition of the British newspaper, noted in this post.
The Court of Appeals in September ruled it did not see any reason to rescind the death sentence on Hood in spite of sworn admissions from both parties as to their secret liaisons and their failure to alert the defence to the fact at the time of the trial. It said Hood had taken too long to raise the matter.
That decision, however, caught the attention of legal experts countrywide. Last week a group of prominent former lawyers, judges and politicians, including a former FBI director and a former governor of Texas, petitioned the US Supreme Court to intervene in the case, arguing that the trial had evidently been tainted by its romance-novel subplot.
In its new finding, the appeals court oddly made no mention of the romantic entanglements of Judge Verla Sue Holland and the prosecutor, Thomas O'Connell. It was ordering a new hearing, it said only, because the jurors at the trial were given insufficient opportunity to consider an alternative punishment to the death sentence and cited the defendant's harsh childhood.
It seemed highly probable, however, that the growing furore over the inappropriate intimacies of the most important players at the trial – aside from the defendant himself – played some part in yesterday's reversal by the court. The Independent has been among newspapers to report on the controversy.
The flawed jury instruction is known as a Penry claim and relief is limited to the punishment phase of a capital murder trial. The original post-Furman Texas jury charge for capital cases was ruled unconstitutional in 1989 in the case of Penry v. Lynaugh. The Supreme Court determined in that case that juries were not allowed to fully consider mitigating circumstances. The jury charge was subsequently re-written by Texas lawmakers.
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