The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has blocked a Texas District Attorney’s final attempt to restore the death sen­tence of Victor Hugo Saldano, who was removed from Texas’s death row in 2000 because of the use of racial­ly charged tes­ti­mo­ny at his tri­al. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for­mer Texas Attorney General John Cornyn was right to dis­miss Saldano’s death sen­tence because it was based on state tes­ti­mo­ny encour­ag­ing racial bias. During the penal­ty phase of Saldano’s 1996 tri­al, psy­chol­o­gist Walter Quijano told the jury that Saldano’s eth­nic­i­ty could be a fac­tor in whether he posed a future dan­ger to soci­ety, cit­ing the over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of blacks and Hispanics in the prison sys­tem. The jury then returned a death sen­tence for Saldano. Following the tri­al, Cornyn said that the tes­ti­mo­ny about Saldano’s eth­nic­i­ty should not have been allowed, and he assert­ed his author­i­ty to remove him from death row. This is also the stance of cur­rent Attorney General Greg Abbott. ​“Because the use of race in Saldano’s sen­tenc­ing seri­ous­ly under­mined the fair­ness, integri­ty or pub­lic rep­u­ta­tion of the judi­cial process, Texas con­fess­es error and agrees that Saldano is enti­tled to a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing,” wrote Cornyn to the Supreme Court as it con­sid­ered the case. The case prompt­ed Texas law­mak­ers to ban the use of racial­ly charged tes­ti­mo­ny. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had upheld the death sen­tence and the Collin County District Attorney tried to chal­lenge Cornyn’s actions in fed­er­al court. (Houston Chronicle, March 25, 2004) See Race and the Death Penalty.

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