The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling in Ex Parte Buck is at the link. Judge Alcala's Dissent was joined by Judges Price and Johnson.
"Split Texas court rejects condemned man's appeal," is Michael Graczyk's AP report, via KDFW-TV.
A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected an appeal from a convicted killer in a Houston case where supporters contend his death sentence unfairly was based on race.
The state's highest criminal court Wednesday refused an appeal from 50-year-old condemned inmate Duane Buck. Buck was convicted of the slaying of his ex-girlfriend and a man at her Houston apartment in July 1995.
During the punishment phase of his 1997 trial, a psychologist testifying for the defense said black people were more likely to commit violence. Advocates for Buck, who is black, say that unfairly influenced the jury, is grounds for a new sentencing hearing and should have been pursued vigorously by lawyers early in the appeals process.
Three of the nine appeals court judges joined in a dissent.
Duane Buck's attorneys have issued the following statement:
“We are gravely disappointed that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has dismissed Duane Buck’s appeal and failed to recognize that his death sentence is the unconstitutional product of racial discrimination. As noted by three members of the Court, ‘[t]he record in this case reveals a chronicle of inadequate representation at every stage of the proceedings, the integrity of which is further called into question by the admission of racist and inflammatory testimony from an expert witness at the punishment stage.’ These judges recognized that this outcome ‘jeopardizes both the integrity of the underlying conviction and of this Court’s judicial processes’ and deprives Mr. Buck of ‘one full and fair opportunity to present his claims.’
“With today’s decision, Texas has once again reneged on its promise to ensure that Mr. Buck would not be executed pursuant to a death sentence that was the unfair product of a prosecutorial appeal to racial bias and stereotype. ,For this reason, more than one hundred civil rights leaders, clergy of various faiths, former judges, former prosecutors, and thousands of individuals in Texas and across the world, have joined our call for a new, fair, and colorblind sentencing for Duane Buck. We now urge the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to respect these calls and refrain from seeking an execution date for Mr. Buck. We will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the important due process and equal protection issues at stake in Mr. Buck’s case, and we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will intervene to right this unequivocal wrong.”
-- Attorneys Kate Black, Christina Swarns (Director of the Criminal Justice Practice at NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund), and Kathryn Kase (Executive Director of Texas Defender Service)
Earlier coverage of Duane Buck's case begins at the link.
The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund has more information on Duane Buck's case.
More 50,000 people from Texas and around the country have signed a Change.org petition calling on Texas officials to grant Mr. Buck a new sentencing hearing.
Related posts are in the race category index.
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