"District judge removed from capital murder trial after labeling Texas’ death penalty law unconstitutional," is the title of Jennifer Emily's report in today's Dallas Morning News.
An administrative judge ordered Tuesday that a state district judge should be removed from a capital murder trial because of her personal beliefs after she ruled that the state law allowing the death penalty is unconstitutional.
Administrative Judge John Ovard said state District Judge Teresa Hawthorne should be removed from presiding over the Roderick Harris death penalty trial after Dallas County prosecutors said those beliefs, and not the law, influenced her decision.
Ovard said from the bench that he was not ruling that Hawthorne was biased, only that prosecutors met the legal standard that a “reasonable person” could perceive bias.
Hawthorne, who did not attend the hearing, said later that she had hoped her ruling would encourage the state to adopt guidelines for how prosecutors go about seeking the death penalty in capital murder cases. Prosecutors can seek the death penalty if someone is murdered during the course of another felony, but they do not always do so.
“I respect the decision that Judge Ovard has made,” Hawthorne said in an interview inside her chambers. “All I was asking for was the Court of Criminal Appeals to look at the statute and set standards for who gets the death penalty and who does not.”
Special prosecutor Kevin Brooks and defense attorneys Brad Lollar and Doug Parks declined to comment on Ovard’s ruling.
But Lollar said that, for now, Hawthorne’s rulings still stand.
“She’s been recused,” she said. “That doesn’t mean her rulings have gone away.”
Lollar said prosecutors can ask the judge who has now been assigned the case — state District Judge Mike Snipes — to reconsider the motions Hawthorne granted.
Hawthorne made her initial ruling on the death penalty law after motions by defense attorneys raised the issue.
At Tuesday’s recusal hearing, a prosecutor on the case, Patrick Kirlin, testified that Hawthorne told him outside the courtroom “sometimes you have to follow your heart” after she made the ruling. Kirlin said that her comment to him and those she read during the hearing were an important part of why prosecutors want to recuse Hawthorne.
The AP filing is, "Judge off case after ruling executions illegal," via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
A North Texas judge was removed from presiding over a death penalty case Tuesday after she ruled that the state law allowing executions was unconstitutional.
An administrative judge sided with Dallas County prosecutors and removed state District Judge Teresa Hawthorne from the capital murder case of Roderick Harris, who is accused of fatally shooting two men in 2009. Administrative Judge John Ovard ruled that Hawthorne should be removed because of personal beliefs she expressed about the death penalty.
Ovard is the presiding judge of the state's First Administrative Judicial Region, which covers most of East Texas.
Hawthorne ruled last month that the Texas death penalty law was unconstitutional because it allows prosecutors to arbitrarily seek the penalty, The Dallas Morning News reported.
"Dallas County Judge Who Ruled Death Penalty Unconstitutional Is Forced To Recuse Herself," by Anna Merlan for the Dallas Observer.
Assistant District Attorney David Alex argued that Hawthorne's bias against the death penalty was clear from statements she made during a December 19 pre-trial hearing. He quoted, in bits and pieces, things the judge said in open court that day, such as: "I remember when women and blacks could not vote. I remember when so-called witches were burned. I remember when gays had to hide to be in the military." Hawthorne said then she wasn't trying to engage in judicial activism; she insisted last month that she was not trying to "buck the system or stir the waters." Alex vehemently disagreed.
"The judge analogized the death penalty to some very heinous times in our American history," Alex told the court. It's obvious, he said, that she has "very strong emotional, personal feelings against the death penalty. ... But none of these things have anything to do with legal precedent."
Leslie Rachael Jones, another assistant DA who's also prosecuting the Harris case, testified that during the December 19 hearing, Hawthorne "appear[ed] to be emotional" and "choked up" before reading from her ruling. In that ruling, Hawthorne said the Texas death penalty statute is unconstitutionally vague because it doesn't adequately define terms like "mitigating evidence" and "future dangerousness," terms that are crucial for juries who must choose between life and death.
"This is a very difficult decision for me," Hawthorne said, according to court transcripts. "So there are a few thing I want to say. ... We can all agree judges are gatekeepers of society's standards of decency and fairness. The system that determines who should die in Texas is truly broken."
The prosecutors showed that Hawthorne's comments about "gatekeepers" and Texas's "broken system" are direct quotes from a Houston judge, Kevin Fine. Fine ruled in 2010 that the state death penalty statute is unconstitutional because it carries too large a risk of executing an innocent person. At the time, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott released a statement calling Fine's ruling "an act of unabashed judicial activism." Facing a recusal hearing, Fine eventually withdrew his ruling and did not recuse himself from the case in question. ADA David Alex told Unfair Park later that judges ruling against the death penalty in Texas is "a bad trend."
In his cross-examination of Jones, one of Harris's defense attorney, Brad Lollar, said as far as he was concerned there was "a lot of misinformation about what the judge actually ruled. The judge has not ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, but the Texas death penalty statute, because it's 'arbitrary and capricious.'" Lollar argued that Hawthorne was actually "exercising her right and duty as a trial judge" to make a ruling based on the evidence before her.
Earlier coverage of the Dallas case begins at the link.
Comments