On October 27, a group of for­mer Texas judges, pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers deliv­ered a let­ter to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Attorney Lynn Switzer request­ing DNA tests for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Signatories to the let­ter include: Mark White, for­mer Governor of Texas (pic­tured); Morris L. Overstreet, for­mer Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Sam Millsap, for­mer Bexar County District Attorney; Kenneth J. Mighell, for­mer United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas; Earl D. Musick, for­mer Lieutenant of the Houston Police Department; and Rodney Ellis, cur­remt State Senator. Skinner is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on November 9 despite the fact that key pieces of DNA evi­dence in his case have nev­er been test­ed. Skinner has court deci­sions pend­ing in both fed­er­al and state courts, but his exe­cu­tion has not been stayed. The authors of the let­ter expressed ​“grave and grow­ing con­cerns about the State’s stub­born refusal to date to test all the evi­dence in the Skinner case. Executing Mr. Skinner with­out test­ing all the rel­e­vant evi­dence would sug­gest offi­cial indif­fer­ence to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error in this case and need­less­ly under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in Texas’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” The let­ter con­clud­ed, ​“There is sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­able rea­son why Texas con­tin­ues to waste tax­pay­er dol­lars in its decade-long fight to pre­vent sci­en­tif­ic test­ing in Mr. Skinner’s case. We implore you to take the lead in the search for truth in this case. Test the DNA evi­dence before mov­ing for­ward with Mr. Skinner’s execution.”

(Letter to Texas Officials, October 27, 2011). See Innocence and New Voices.

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