Texas Prepares to Execute Richard Masterson While Autopsy Data Suggests Death Was Not Murder At All

As Texas read­ies itself to exe­cute Richard Masterson (pic­tured), his lawyers have filed new plead­ings ques­tion­ing whether any mur­der occurred at all and are seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion based on what they say is ​“evi­dence of State fraud, mis­con­duct, and his actu­al inno­cence.” Masterson’s fil­ings chal­lenge the foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion in the case, the accu­ra­cy of instruc­tions giv­en to jurors, and the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Texas’ lethal injec­tion secrecy law. 

Masterson is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on January 20 for the death of Darrin Honeycutt, which med­ical exam­in­er, Paul Shrode, tes­ti­fied had been caused by stran­gu­la­tion. His attor­neys argue in a new fed­er­al court fil­ing that pros­e­cu­tors con­cealed evi­dence that their expert wit­ness and attend­ing med­ical exam­in­er was unqual­i­fied to per­form Mr. Honeycutt’s autop­sy, botched the autop­sy, fal­si­fied his cre­den­tials, and gave false tes­ti­mo­ny in this case and oth­er cap­i­tal murder trials. 

Two pathol­o­gists who exam­ined autop­sy data say that the Shrode was unqual­i­fied and incor­rect­ly ruled Honeycutt’s death a homi­cide, when it was most like­ly caused by a heart attack. In 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Richard Nields based upon con­cerns about Dr. Shrode’s asser­tion that the vic­tim in that case had been stran­gled. Shrode was sub­se­quent­ly fired as chief med­ical exam­in­er in El Paso County, Texas, after dis­crep­an­cies were found in his resume and rev­e­la­tions were made about his unsup­port­ed tes­ti­mo­ny in the Ohio case. 

Masterson’s attor­neys also argue that Masterson false­ly con­fessed to the mur­der charges dur­ing a peri­od of with­draw­al from addic­tive stim­u­lants in which he exhib­it­ed sui­ci­dal behav­ior. In a sep­a­rate fil­ing, they chal­lenge the fair­ness of his tri­al because the judge failed to inform jurors that they could con­vict Masterson of a less­er offense, rather than cap­i­tal mur­der. A third fil­ing chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Texas’ lethal injec­tion secre­cy law, which pre­vents inmates from obtain­ing infor­ma­tion about the source of the state’s execution drugs.