UPDATE: CHARLES HOOD’S EXECUTION HAS BEEN STAYED BY THE TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS. A Texas state judge has ordered a hear­ing into the accu­sa­tion of an affair between the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor in Charles Hood’s death penal­ty case. With a week to go before Hood’s exe­cu­tion date, the Texas Attorney General also called for a review of the fair­ness of the tri­al. The Attorney General, Greg Abbott, request­ed that the dis­trict court ​“thor­ough­ly review the defendant’s claims before the exe­cu­tion pro­ceeds [to] pro­tect the integri­ty of the Texas legal sys­tem.” He added, ​“The impar­tial­i­ty of a defendant’s tri­al and con­vic­tion must be beyond reproach. 

Thus, before the state car­ries out the ulti­mate, irre­versible pun­ish­ment, the appro­pri­ate tri­al court should thor­ough­ly review this mat­ter.” The lat­est motion seek­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion had land­ed in Judge Robert T. Dry’s court, who set a hear­ing date two days after the sched­uled exe­cu­tion. In his opin­ion, ​“You are explor­ing a civ­il law­suit for the estate of Mr. Hood.” He acknowl­edged that he knew the judge and pros­e­cu­tor very well, but then sud­den­ly recused him­self on September 3rd when he revealed that he had also been close friends and busi­ness part­ners with the judge’s for­mer hus­band. The case is now sched­uled for a hear­ing on September 8th, before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion, under Judge Greg Brewer. The hear­ing will be held to decide if the judge and pros­e­cu­tor will be required to tes­ti­fy.

(J. McKinley, Jr., ​“As Texas exe­cu­tion nears, hear­ing is set on claim judge and pros­e­cu­tor had affair,” New York Times, September 5, 2008). See Representation and Arbitrariness.

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