Texas Executes John Hummel, Former Marine with Service-Related Trauma Whose Trial Lawyer Now Works for Prosecutor Who is Trying to Execute Him

Texas exe­cut­ed John Hummel on June 30, 2021, an hon­or­ably dis­charged for­mer Marine with ser­vice-relat­ed trau­ma whose tri­al lawyer now works for the pros­e­cu­tor who was try­ing to execute him. 

Hummel had come with­in two days of exe­cu­tion in March 2020, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay because of health con­cerns relat­ed to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In June 2021, Hummel’s lawyer, Michael Mowla, indi­cat­ed that no appeals would be filed to try to halt the execution.

Hummel was only the sec­ond per­son put to death by any state in 2021 — both by Texas. Plans for his exe­cu­tion sparked con­tro­ver­sy because of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s fail­ure to allow media wit­ness­es at the May 19 exe­cu­tion of Quintin Jones and the department’s lack of trans­paren­cy in address­ing that failure.

Hummel was a for­mer Marine who expe­ri­enced trau­ma as a result of his ser­vice. At the sen­tenc­ing phase of his tri­al, a psy­chol­o­gist tes­ti­fied that Hummel like­ly had sev­er­al per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders, but his attor­ney, Larry Moore, pre­sent­ed no evi­dence about Hummel’s mil­i­tary ser­vice or its impact on his men­tal health and failed to rebut evi­dence pre­sent­ed by pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es who den­i­grat­ed Hummel’s time in the service. 

In a June 30 op-ed in Medium, retired U.S. Navy Captain Art Cody, the Director of Criminal Programs at the Veteran Advocacy Project, not­ed that two Marines — Hummel and Nevada death-row pris­on­er Zane Floyd — face exe­cu­tion this sum­mer. ​“What we ask of our ser­vice­men often gives rise to their men­tal ill­ness which, when not prop­er­ly treat­ed, lands them on our death rows.” 

Too often, Cody, said, these vet­er­ans reach death row because of fail­ures by the gov­ern­ments they served. “[M]ental health resources to vet­er­ans have been and con­tin­ue to be lack­ing,” Cody said. Counsel appoint­ed to rep­re­sent vet­er­ans in death penal­ty tri­als before large­ly non-vet­er­an juries and judges often fail to ade­quate­ly explain the vet­er­ans’ ser­vice to the coun­try and their ser­vice-relat­ed impair­ments. ​“We as a nation should … reex­am­ine our treat­ment of vet­er­ans and ensure that they are giv­en the best in both men­tal health treat­ment and crim­i­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” Cody said. ​“We may wish to con­sid­er whether men­tal­ly ill vet­er­ans should be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty at all.”

The Alleged Conflict of Interest

Moore is now a pros­e­cu­tor in the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office, which pros­e­cut­ed Hummel, filed the motions to set his exe­cu­tion dates, and con­tin­ued to seek his exe­cu­tion. In ear­li­er appeals, Mowla argued that this pre­sent­ed a con­flict of inter­est that should have dis­qual­i­fied Tarrant County pros­e­cu­tors from involve­ment in the case. 

While the DA’s office argued that Moore has not been direct­ly involved in its work on Hummel’s case, Mowla wrote, “[c]onsciously or not, Larry Moore and the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office stand to ben­e­fit by has­ten­ing Hum­mel’s exe­cu­tion” because the appeals process has drawn atten­tion to Moore’s inef­fec­tive­ness in Hummel’s case.

The Controversy Over Media Witnesses

The ACLU of Texas asked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to delay Hummel’s exe­cu­tion to ensure that the prison does not repeat the mis­takes made dur­ing Jones’ exe­cu­tion when, for the first time in the 571 exe­cu­tions per­formed in Texas since 1976, media wit­ness­es were not brought into the view­ing room. ​“We are writ­ing to express our deep con­cern regard­ing TDCJ’s plan to move for­ward with future exe­cu­tions, despite the lack of pub­lic account­abil­i­ty for the enor­mous mis­takes” made dur­ing Jones’ exe­cu­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion wrote in a let­ter to TDCJ exec­u­tive direc­tor Bryan Collier. 

The let­ter added that a 30-day stay ​“would give TDCJ addi­tion­al time to ensure ade­quate mea­sures are in place to pre­vent crit­i­cal errors at Mr. Hummel’s exe­cu­tion, pro­vide the pub­lic with an account of the rea­sons for the errors at Mr. Jones’s exe­cu­tion, and make pub­lic the plan to pre­vent such errors going forward.”

Jeremy Desel, a spokesper­son for TDCJ, told Newsweek that the prison sys­tem had inves­ti­gat­ed the exclu­sion of media wit­ness­es. TDCJ’s fail­ure, he said, was the result of ​“a cul­mi­na­tion of fac­tors” and was ​“pre­ventable and inexcusable.” 

Desel said that sev­er­al mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team had retired or changed roles in the ten months between Texas’ last exe­cu­tion of 2020 and Jones’ exe­cu­tion in 2021. TDCJ blamed the role changes, as well as a new pro­ce­dure allow­ing spir­i­tu­al advi­sors to accom­pa­ny pris­on­ers into the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, writ­ing, ​“a lack of insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge with­in the admin­is­tra­tive team, a recent­ly revised exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure, and insuf­fi­cient over­sight all con­tributed to the inci­dent.” TDCJ said that its inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion showed that ​“exten­sive train­ing” had been con­duct­ed in prepa­ra­tion for Jones’ exe­cu­tion, but ​“it became clear dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion that spe­cif­ic respon­si­bil­i­ties for indi­vid­u­als par­tic­i­pat­ing in the process were not clearly defined.”

Savannah Kumar, an attor­ney with the ACLU of Texas, told Newsweek that TDCJ refused to pro­duce records relat­ed to fail­ures dur­ing the Jones exe­cu­tion and that the ACLU was not sat­is­fied with TDCJ’s lack of trans­paren­cy regard­ing its inves­ti­ga­tion. ​“We real­ly need to see details about not only these errors, but also how these errors will be fixed,” she said. TDCJ self-inter­est­ed ren­di­tion of the inci­dent ​“pro­vides Texans with absolute­ly no reas­sur­ance about the exe­cu­tion process, and TDCJ’s abil­i­ty to ensure that even the most basic stan­dards with regard to com­mu­ni­ca­tion, over­sight and train­ing are actu­al­ly being fol­lowed, espe­cial­ly when using the state’s pow­er to strip a person’s life entire­ly away from them,” she said.