NEWS (12/​11/​20) — Texas: The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the con­vic­tions and death sen­tences imposed on Major Nidal Hasan in the mass shoot­ing at Fort Hood that killed 13 and wounded 32.

The appeals court ruled that the mil­i­tary judge did not err in allow­ing Major Hasan to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al and sen­tenc­ing and in deny­ing stand­by coun­sel’s motion for the inde­pen­dent pre­sen­ta­tion of mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence. The court also reject­ed the defense’s argu­ment that the tri­al should have been moved to a dif­fer­ent venue because of exten­sive prej­u­di­cial pre­tri­al pub­lic­i­ty. Among oth­er issues, the court also denied the defense’s chal­lenges to the com­po­si­tion of the jury, say­ing that a juror who had a bumper stick­er that read ​“Major League Infidel” could fair­ly and impar­tial­ly decide Major Hasan’s case. 

NEWS (12/​10/​20) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has reversed the con­vic­tions and death sen­tences imposed on Thomas Randolph for alleged­ly ​“con­spir­ing with a hit­man to have his sixth wife mur­dered dur­ing a staged bur­glary and then mur­der­ing the hitman.”

The court held that the state had improp­er­ly pre­sent­ed evi­dence of Randolph’s alleged pri­or bad acts relat­ed to the death of Randolph’s ear­li­er wife, Betty, who died under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. That evi­dence con­sist­ed almost exclu­sive­ly of inad­mis­si­ble hearsay tes­ti­mo­ny and prej­u­di­cial state­ments about the grue­some­ness of Betty’s death, and Randolph had been acquit­ted of the murder charges.

NEWS (12/​9/​20) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that Clifton Williams is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and has con­vert­ed his death sen­tence to life impris­on­ment. Although the court ini­tial­ly upheld Williams’ death sen­tence, it lat­er returned the case to the tri­al court for recon­sid­er­a­tion after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Texas that the Texas courts had been apply­ing an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dard for deter­min­ing intellectual disability.

On remand, the Smith County tri­al court reviewed Williams’ evi­dence under the accept­ed clin­i­cal cri­te­ria for diag­nos­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and deter­mined that Williams was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. The appeals court accept­ed the tri­al court’s find­ings and removed Williams from death row. Williams’ offense was com­mit­ted in July 2005, just before the September 1, 2005 effec­tive date of Texas’ life with­out parole statute. As a result, he will be eli­gi­ble to apply for parole after serv­ing 40 years in prison.

NEWS (12/​8/​20) — Ohio: The Ohio Court of Appeals for the 10^th District has affirmed a tri­al court rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Caron Montgomery, find­ing he had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the penal­ty phase of his trial. 

Montgomery’s tri­al coun­sel made a strate­gic deci­sion to present evi­dence of his exten­sive­ly trau­mat­ic upbring­ing, but failed to inves­ti­gate and present tes­ti­mo­ny from men­tal health experts that could have explained the sig­nif­i­cant effects of that trau­ma. The appeals court agreed that counsel’s per­for­mance was both defi­cient and prejudicial.