Ronald Curtis Chambers, who was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the 1975 mur­der of Mike McMahan, may be giv­en a fourth tri­al fol­low­ing a rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chambers was 20 at the time of his crime, and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in Texas. His sec­ond tri­al came 10 years after his first, fol­low­ing a Texas court rul­ing that Chambers should have been told that infor­ma­tion from a psy­chi­atric con­sul­ta­tion could be used against him. Chambers received a third tri­al after courts found that the jury selec­tion in his orig­i­nal tri­al had been racial­ly biased. He was sen­tenced to death at all three tri­als.

Chambers was grant­ed his most recent re-tri­al because the jury instruc­tions dur­ing his 1992 tri­al did not allow the jurors to prop­er­ly con­sid­er mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that might have made the death penal­ty inap­pro­pri­ate. These mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors includ­ed his young age, his home life, and the poor eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in west Dallas where he was raised. The stan­dard jury instruc­tions used at Chambers’ tri­al have since been changed, but some inmates who were sen­tenced by juries who were giv­en these instruc­tions remain on death row.

Jordan Steiker, a law pro­fes­sor at the University of Texas, ques­tioned the wis­dom of sub­mit­ting Chambers to still anoth­er death penal­ty tri­al after all these years and all the mis­takes made by the state: ​“The impor­tant thing to con­sid­er is Mr. Chambers’ age, as well as the extra­or­di­nary expense of seek­ing anoth­er death ver­dict. It’s hard to imag­ine that the Dallas tax­pay­ers would want to spend mil­lions more.”
(“Dallas man on death row gets fourth tri­al after review,” by Diane Jennings, The Dallas Morning News, January 2, 2008). See also Arbitrariness and Time on Death Row.

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