Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit called on Texas to pay more than ​‘lip ser­vice’ to pro­vid­ing indi­vid­u­als fac­ing the death penal­ty with a tru­ly fair and con­sti­tu­tion­al tri­al. He stat­ed that more resources must be placed on train­ing attor­neys and judges at the tri­al lev­el in order to pro­tect against exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. Higginbotham, writ­ing along with attor­ney Mark Curriden of Vinson & Elkins, not­ed that dur­ing the past three years, the U.S. Supreme Court has reviewed sev­en cap­i­tal cas­es from Texas and reversed all sev­en. Moreover, ​“the Supreme Court and low­er courts have over­turned 165 Texas death penal­ty con­vic­tions or sen­tences since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed three decades ago.”

​“The cas­es include instances in which defense attor­neys slept through tri­al, came to court intox­i­cat­ed, or did very lit­tle work on their clients’ behalf. There are cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors with­held evi­dence or allowed wit­ness­es to fab­ri­cate tes­ti­mo­ny. And there are cas­es in which judges mis­in­ter­pret­ed the law, mis­han­dled jury selec­tion, or issued flawed jury instruc­tions.”

They high­light­ed the train­ing pro­grams of the Center for American and International Law, a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion that pro­motes con­tin­u­ing legal edu­ca­tion. The Center will con­duct pro­grams for defense attor­neys, judges and pros­e­cu­tors in 2005. 

(The Dallas Morning News, January 23, 2005). See Representation, Innocence, and Costs.

Citation Guide