Alleging wrong­ful pros­e­cu­tion, Texas death row pris­on­er Terry Edwards (pic­tured), who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 26, is seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present new evi­dence that his case was taint­ed by racial­ly-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and false and mis­lead­ing foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Edwards was pros­e­cut­ed by Dallas County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney Thomas D’Amore, who, the defense says, was lead pros­e­cu­tor in at least three oth­er cas­es in which defen­dants were exon­er­at­ed after sim­i­lar mis­con­duct was dis­closed. The Dallas DA’s office fired D’Amore in 2006. Edwards, who had no pri­or his­to­ry of vio­lence, says that he was not the trig­ger­man in a rob­bery-mur­der that pros­e­cu­tors say he com­mit­ted with his cousin, and that the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed false expert tes­ti­mo­ny to bol­ster its claim that he was the killer. The cousin — who has an exten­sive his­to­ry of vio­lent recidi­vism — was charged with both mur­ders but then per­mit­ted to plead guilty to only rob­bery, and is now eli­gi­ble for parole. A state foren­sic ana­lyst ini­tial­ly tes­ti­fied that no gun­shot residue was detect­ed on Edwards’ hands when they were test­ed imme­di­ate­ly after the crime. She changed her tes­ti­mo­ny on cross-exam­i­na­tion, stat­ing that one of three chem­i­cal ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with gun­shot residue was found on Edwards hands and that he could have sweat­ed or wiped away the oth­er two. A for­mer FBI agent who lat­er reviewed the case has called that expla­na­tion ​“sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly unsup­port­able,” explain­ing that the com­po­nents of gun­shot residue increase or decrease togeth­er, and that par­ti­cles from gun­shot residue con­tain at least two of the three ele­ments that are test­ed, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to wipe away two of the ele­ments with­out wip­ing away the third. D’Amore and the same state foren­sic ana­lyst were involved in the 1995 tri­al of Richard Miles, who was exon­er­at­ed in 2012 after his lawyers found sim­i­lar flaws in the ana­lyst’s foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Defense lawyers also con­tend that D’Amore with­held evi­dence that eye­wit­ness­es saw Edwards’ cousin inside the restau­rant at the time of the mur­ders and flee­ing out the front door. Citing evi­dence strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that pre­sent­ed in the recent Supreme Court case Foster v. Chatman, Edwards’ lawyers also argue that his con­vic­tion by an all-White jury was the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al prod­uct of racial discrimination.

In Foster, the Court over­turned a defen­dan­t’s con­vic­tion after pros­e­cu­tors were found to have marked Black poten­tial jurors in their notes and removed all of them from the final jury. Prosecutors also struck all Black jurors in Edwards’ case, and their jury selec­tion notes con­tain a list with ​“a hand­writ­ten, encir­cled ​‘B’ ” next to 32 jurors’ names, but jury ques­tion­naires in the case have gone miss­ing, leav­ing Edwards’ attor­neys with­out infor­ma­tion on indi­vid­ual jurors’ races. Just a week before Edwards’ sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office denied Edwards the assis­tance of the Conviction Integrity Unit, block­ing him from access­ing resources intend­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the inves­ti­ga­tion of cas­es like his, where there is doubt about the valid­i­ty of evi­dence. [UPDATE: Texas car­ried out the exe­cu­tion on January 26, 2017.]

(J. Stahl, ​“Is Texas About to Execute an Innocent Man?,” Slate, January 23, 2017; B. Grissom, ​“Death row inmate seeks to halt exe­cu­tion for Dallas-area mur­ders, alleges pros­e­cu­tor mis­con­duct,” The Dallas Morning News, January 18, 2017; Press Release, ​“Attorneys for Terry Edwards Move Dallas County to Withdraw Thursday Execution Date,” The Phillips Black Project, January 24, 2017.) Read the Emergency Motion to Withdraw or Modify Execution in State v. Edwards, No. F02-15086‑N (195th Dist. Ct., Dallas County, Texas January 24, 2017) here. See Innocence, Race, and Prosecutorial Misconduct.

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