Court Recommends New Trial for Texas Death-Row Prisoner, Finding Rights Violated by Trial Judge’s Virulent Anti-Semitism

A Dallas County judge has rec­om­mend­ed that the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of a Jewish death-row pris­on­er be over­turned because his tri­al was poi­soned by the vir­u­lent anti-Semitic big­otry of the Texas judge who presided over his case.

In a scathing 42-page set of fact find­ings issued on December 13, 2022, Judge Lela Lawrence May (pic­tured, left) rec­om­mend­ed that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) grant a new tri­al to Randy Halprin (pic­tured, right), find­ing that for­mer Dallas County Judge Vickers Cunningham ​“har­bored actu­al, sub­jec­tive bias” against Halprin at the time of his tri­al because Halprin is Jewish. May cred­it­ed the tes­ti­mo­ny of numer­ous wit­ness­es that Cunningham sub­scribed to a White Christian Nationalist ide­ol­o­gy, held long-stand­ing big­ot­ed views against Blacks, Hispanics, gays, Catholics, and Jews, and ​“planned to ensure con­vic­tions and death sen­tences for [Halprin and his] co-defen­dants in order to advance his per­son­al inter­ests” in becom­ing Dallas District Attorney.

Halprin is one of the so-called ​“Texas 7” who escaped from a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty Texas prison in December 2000 and sub­se­quent­ly robbed a sport­ing goods store. Dallas police offi­cer Aubrey Hawkins was killed respond­ing to the rob­bery. While sev­er­al of the escapees fired shots, Halprin has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that he opposed bring­ing guns to the rob­bery, did not car­ry a gun, and did not fire any shots. He tes­ti­fied at tri­al, ​“before the rob­bery, I even told [the oth­ers], I’m not going to go in and car­ry a gun, and there was a lit­tle argu­ment. … And so I told them I wasn’t going to pull a gun and they said, fine, just gath­er clothes, grab a shop­ping cart, and gather clothes.”

Halprin was sen­tenced to death under Texas’ con­tro­ver­sial ​“law of par­ties,” which allows defen­dants to be con­vict­ed and pun­ished based upon the actions and intent of oth­ers, if the defen­dant played even a small role in a crime that result­ed in a person’s death. Four of the ​“Texas 7” have been exe­cut­ed, one com­mit­ted sui­cide, and a sixth, Patrick Murphy, who remained in a car in the park­ing lot and did not par­tic­i­pate in the rob­bery, remains on death row after the Texas Board of Pardons denied his appli­ca­tion for clemency.

While Halprin’s appeal from the denial of his ini­tial habeas cor­pus chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence was pend­ing in fed­er­al court, evi­dence became avail­able that for the first time pub­licly doc­u­ment­ed Judge Cunningham’s big­otry. The rev­e­la­tions came to light in 2018 when Cunningham was run­ning for Dallas County Commissioner, fol­low­ing an ear­li­er failed attempt to become Dallas District Attorney. During the race for com­mis­sion­er, Cunningham’s broth­er Bill pub­licly dis­closed that Vickers Cunningham had estab­lished a liv­ing trust for his chil­dren, con­di­tioned upon their mar­ry­ing a white Christian of the oppo­site sex. His broth­er also assert­ed that Cunningham was a long-time big­ot who had fre­quent­ly used the n‑word to describe Black peo­ple, often refer­ring to cas­es involv­ing Black defen­dants as ​“TND” or ​“Typical N****r Deals.” 

After fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, Halprin’s lawyers uncov­ered evi­dence from Cunningham’s rel­a­tives, court employ­ees, and polit­i­cal cam­paign work­ers that they also had heard him talk about ​“GD Jews,” ​“filthy Jews,” and ​“f***ing Jews.” The inves­ti­ga­tion also revealed that Judge Cunningham — who presided over the tri­als of the six liv­ing mem­bers of the Texas Seven — had referred to the men with var­i­ous racial, homo­pho­bic, and anti-Semitic slurs, describ­ing them as ​“the Mexican, the queer, and the Jew” and vow­ing to ​“get them all the death penal­ty.” He also specif­i­cal­ly referred to Mr. Halprin as ​“the k***” after the tri­al. Three of the Texas Seven who were tried in front of Cunningham and sub­se­quent­ly were exe­cut­ed were Latino.

With this new evi­dence, Halprin filed a new fed­er­al habeas peti­tion in May 2019 seek­ing to over­turn his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Dallas pros­e­cu­tors respond­ed in June 2019 by seek­ing a war­rant for his exe­cu­tion, which Judge May issued in July. Halprin then filed his judi­cial bias claim in state court and sought a stay of exe­cu­tion to allow him to pur­sue that claim. On October 4, 2019 — six days before he was sched­uled to die — the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant­ed a stay and returned the case to the Dallas court to resolve his claim.

On remand, pros­e­cu­tors agreed to sub­mit the case to the court based on wit­ness affi­davits, after which Judge Mays found that ​“Judge Vickers Cunningham pos­sessed anti-Semitic prej­u­dice against Halprin which vio­lat­ed Halprin’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a tri­al in a fair tri­bunal, equal pro­tec­tion, and free exer­cise of reli­gion.” The ​“only rem­e­dy” for Halprin, Mays wrote, is ​“a new fair tri­al.” However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed that rul­ing and returned the case to the tri­al court for an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, say­ing that live tes­ti­mo­ny was nec­es­sary before the court could con­clude that Cunningham was biased.

At that hear­ing, Halprin pre­sent­ed evi­dence span­ning decades of Cunningham’s repeat­ed use of big­ot­ed racial, reli­gious, eth­nic, and homo­pho­bic slurs. Judge Mays found that cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny had estab­lished that Cunningham exhib­it­ed a pat­tern of anti-Semitism that ​“was ful­ly formed by the time he was old enough to dri­ve,” and that he ​“took plea­sure in dis­parag­ing Jews and abus­ing peo­ple of col­or through­out his life.” She also cred­it­ed tes­ti­mo­ny that Cunningham con­tin­ued to refer to Halprin and oth­ers of the Texas Seven with slurs dur­ing the course of his unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign for Dallas District Attorney after the tri­als and found no cred­i­ble innocu­ous rea­son to explain Cunningham’s repeat­ed ref­er­ence to Halprin as ​“the Jew,” ​“Jew Halprin,” and ​“Randy the Jew.” 

Mays con­clud­ed that Cunningham had ​“viewed the Texas 7 tri­al as a means of advanc­ing his polit­i­cal career and agen­da which includ­ed assert­ing White suprema­cy over Blacks and Latinos in Dallas County.” Mays rec­om­mend­ed that the TCCA, which retained juris­dic­tion over the case, vacate Halprin’s con­vic­tion and sen­tence, find­ing that Cunningham’s bias vio­lat­ed Halprin’s rights to due process, equal pro­tec­tion of the law, and free exer­cise of religion.