A judge in Texas has recommended that the claim of an unfair trial brought by death row inmate Charles Hood should go forward because the trial judge and prosecutor had a secret romantic relationship that they hid from the defendant before, during, and after his trial. CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen reported on the story, writing, “Hood's judge and prosecutor lied, over and over again, to hide their affair. Any blame for the delay in bringing justice to Hood is their fault, not his, and Texas would be better off acknowledging that now.” Judge Brewer of the Collin County District Court found that the trial judge and prosecutor, "wrongfully withheld relevant information from defense counsel prior to and during the trial, the direct appeal, the state habeas proceedings, the federal habeas proceedings, and the successive state habeas proceedings." He recommended that Hood be granted a new trial.
The case will now be reviewed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Cohen’s full article may be read below:
In a thorough and penetrating article published in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers further evidence that Texas probably executed an innocent man in 2004. Grann carefully examines all the evidence that was used in the two-day trial in 1992 to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of murder by arson of his three young children. It is now well established through a series of investigations by other fire experts that the forensic evidence of arson presented at trial had no scientific basis and should not have led to Willingham's conviction. Another piece of evidence used at trial was the testimony of a jailhouse informant who said that Willingham had confessed to the crime, despite the fact that he had always maintained his innocence and even refused a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty. The informer eventually received early release, tried to recant his testimony, and is now no longer sure what he heard. He also suffers from mental disorders. Willingham's lawyers thought he was 100% guilty and offered no rebuttal expert to question the finding of arson. At the sentencing hearing, the prosecution put on a psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, who made a living helping to send defendants to death row by testifying to their future dangerousness without even interviewing them. Dr. Grigson said that Willingham was an "extremely severe sociopath," words similar to those he used to describe Randall Dale Adams, who was eventually exonerated following an investigation by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, portrayed in the film "A Thin Blue Line."
The latest edition of Lapham’s Quarterly features essays from a wide variety of authors reflecting on crime and punishment. At least one of the articles, by Christopher Hitchens, focuses on the death penalty. In “Staking a Life,” Hitchens draws on his background in religion, morality, and government to explore why the United States continues to utilize capital punishment while many of our allies have abandoned it. “I have heard a number of suggested answers: two in particular have some superficial plausibility," he writes. "The first is an old connection between executions and racism, and the second is the relatively short distance in time that separates the modern U.S. from the days of frontier justice.” He concludes: "At once too random and too institutional and systematic, this dire [death penalty] business has now become an offense both to law and to justice."