Today's Austin American-Statesman reports, "Petition: Condemned man's sentence racially tinged." It's written by Steven Kreytak.
In 2000, then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn said seven death row inmates had been unfairly sentenced to death because improper racial testimony had been presented at their trials.
"It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system," Cornyn, now a U.S. senator, said at the time.
Six of those inmates later got new sentencing hearings. But a seventh — Duane Edward Buck, convicted of a 1995 Harris County double murder — did not. Buck, 48, is scheduled to die Sept. 15.
On Wednesday, Buck's lawyers petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry to stop the execution.
Buck's lawyers with the Texas Defender Service have also asked current Attorney General Greg Abbott and Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to agree to cancel the execution date, said Andrea Keilan, director of the service.
"It's very rare to see an attorney general concede error in a capital case, much less a series of capital cases," Keilan said. "It shouldn't be controversial, and yet no one has stepped forward" to give Buck a new sentencing trial.
The seven cases identified by Cornyn were all tainted by testimony by psychologist Walter Quijano, who regularly told juries that defendants were more likely to commit future criminal acts because they were black or Hispanic. He based his testimony on the fact that blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented in the Texas prison system when compared with the state's general population.
His testimony was intended to inform the key decision by juries in assessing the death penalty in Texas: whether the defendant would be a likely future threat to society.
"Lawyers Seek Reprieve for Inmate Based on Race Testimony," by Brandi Grissom for the Texas Tribune.
When Duane Edward Buck was on trial for capital murder in Houston in 1997, Dr. Walter Quijano told jurors that the fact he was black meant Buck was more likely to be violent in the future.
The same psychologist gave similar testimony in six other death row cases. In each, the defendants were given new trials to determine their sentences.
Buck, though, has not received a retrial and is scheduled to die Sept. 15 for the 1995 shooting deaths of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. Today, Buck's lawyers asked Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop the scheduled execution to allow a new trial without racial references.
“If Mr. Buck is executed, not only will Texas have violated the constitution, it will have violated its citizens’ basic moral values by permitting an execution to be carried out that is based on an individual’s race,” Kate Black, a lawyer for Buck, said in a statement.
In 2000, then-Attorney General John Cornyn admitted the state had erred in seven death row cases — including Buck's — in which prosecutors elicited testimony from Quijano indicating that their racial or ethnic background made them more inclined to commit more violent crimes.
And:
Cornyn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Buck case.
Buck’s lawyers said that he has not received a new trial because of procedural stumbling blocks, and they asked Perry and the board to commute his sentence or grant a 120-day reprieve. “The State of Texas cannot and should not tolerate an execution on the basis of an individual’s race, particularly where this State’s highest legal officer has acknowledged the error, not only in similarly situated cases, but in thiscase,” they wrote in the petition filed today.
Earlier coverage of Duane Buck's case begins at the link.
The clemency petition for Duane Edward Buck is available via Sribd. Two archived news releases issued by then-Attorney General John Cornyn on June 9, 2009 reference the case.
Those who would like to urge clemency can sign on to a statement at Change.org.
Related posts are in the future dangerousness index.
Comments