The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rulings in Velez v. State and Ex Parte Alexander are available in Adobe .pdf format.
The AP filing is, "2 death row inmates win new punishment trials," by Michael Graczyk. It's via the Houston Chronicle.
The state's highest criminal court reversed the death sentences of two convicted Texas killers Wednesday and narrowly rejected an appeal from a third death row inmate.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that testimony from a prison expert during the punishment phase of Manuel Velez's capital murder trial in Cameron County was improper, meaning the 47-year-old construction worker is entitled to a new punishment trial.
Velez was convicted of killing his girlfriend's son, Angel Moreno, a day before the boy's first birthday in February 2005 at their Brownsville home. Evidence showed he either hit the boy's head on a surface or struck him in the head with an undetermined object.
The court agreed with Velez's attorneys that prison expert A.P. Merillat was wrong when he testified about the security level classification of Texas inmates who serve life without parole. Velez's jury had the task of deciding between a death sentence and life without parole. Merillat and prosecutors who called him to testify as an expert witness on prisons and inmate violence should have known the testimony was incorrect, the court ruled.
And:
In the second case, the Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously agreed Guy Stephen Alexander, 52, should get a new punishment hearing because jurors had no way in 1989 to properly consider mitigating evidence in his case.
Alexander was arrested for killing Wilma Jewel Wofford, 75, of Houston, during a January 1989 robbery. Wofford was beaten with a brick and strangled. Alexander, a 29-year-old mechanic at the time, fled to Mississippi, where he was found driving Wofford's car and arrested.
He later gave police a written confession, and evidence at the scene of the killing was linked to him.
His trial was held during a time when trial rules for Texas capital cases were evolving, particularly in the area of mitigating evidence and how it should be applied to punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court has visited the issue several times, refining trial procedures through its rulings, and several cases of that era have been returned to trial courts for new punishment hearings.
"Death Sentence Thrown Out in 2005 Murder Case," is Shefali Luthra's post at Texas Tribune.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday threw out the death sentence of Manuel Velez, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s infant son in 2005. The decision was based on what the court said was the use of inaccurate expert testimony during Velez’s sentencing.
Velez, who was convicted by a Cameron County jury, will be taken off death row, though he has not been cleared of his conviction. Velez has already filed an appeal of his conviction, said Brian Stull, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project.
Velez’s death sentence was based on testimony from state expert A.P. Merillat, who gave the jury incorrect information about what freedoms Velez would have if not sentenced to death, according to Wednesday's ruling.
And:
Velez will be represented by lawyers from two private law firms when he appeals his sentence, though Stull said he will be available to Velez as well.
The lawyers have uncovered evidence that injuries to the baby were sustained before Velez lived with him and while Velez was out of the state, Stull said.
Related posts are in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals category index.
Problems with Texas' jury charge in death penalty cases were first ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1989 case, Penry v. Lynaugh. That ruling was more fully applied following the 2007 case, Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman; more on both cases via Oyez. Juries must be able to consider all mitigating evidence that might lead them to issue a life sentence rather than a death sentence. Texas' 1975 death penalty law did not allow jurors to do that.
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