Linda Geffin (pic­tured) was one of the Texas pros­e­cu­tors who won a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for Duane Buck in 1997. She is now the divi­sion chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit in the Office of the Harris County Attorney, and she is urg­ing Gov. Rick Perry and oth­er state offi­cials to stop Buck’s September 15 exe­cu­tion because improp­er race evi­dence was put before the jury con­sid­er­ing his sen­tence. In a let­ter to state offi­cials, Geffin said that for­mer Texas Attorney General John Cornyn had pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged the ​“improp­er injec­tion of race in the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing in Mr. Buck’s case,” and that ​“No indi­vid­ual should be exe­cut­ed with­out being afford­ed a fair tri­al, untaint­ed by con­sid­er­a­tions of race.” On June 9, 2000, Cornyn called for new sen­tenc­ing tri­als for the defend­ents who had been improp­er­ly sen­tenced to death because of the racial­ly biased tes­ti­mo­ny. Of those sev­en defend­ents, Buck is the only one who has not been grant­ed a new sentencing.

(Letter from Linda Geffin to Texas state offi­cials, Sept. 9, 2011). See also Press Release from the Texas Defender Service here; and Only Texas Inmate Not Resentenced After Admittedly Racially Biased Testimony Faces Execution. More gen­er­al­ly, see New Voices and Race. UPDATE: See arti­cle by Andrew Cohen in the Atlantic on Buck’s case (Sept. 13, 2011). Buck was denied a rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. UPDATE: Buck’s exe­cu­tion was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 15, 2011.

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