The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has blocked a Texas District Attorney’s final attempt to restore the death sentence of Victor Hugo Saldano, who was removed from Texas’s death row in 2000 because of the use of racially charged testimony at his trial. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that former Texas Attorney General John Cornyn was right to dismiss Saldano’s death sentence because it was based on state testimony encouraging racial bias. During the penalty phase of Saldano’s 1996 trial, psychologist Walter Quijano told the jury that Saldano’s ethnicity could be a factor in whether he posed a future danger to society, citing the over-representation of blacks and Hispanics in the prison system. The jury then returned a death sentence for Saldano. Following the trial, Cornyn said that the testimony about Saldano’s ethnicity should not have been allowed, and he asserted his authority to remove him from death row. This is also the stance of current Attorney General Greg Abbott. “Because the use of race in Saldano’s sentencing seriously undermined the fairness, integrity or public reputation of the judicial process, Texas confesses error and agrees that Saldano is entitled to a new sentencing hearing,” wrote Cornyn to the Supreme Court as it considered the case. The case prompted Texas lawmakers to ban the use of racially charged testimony. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had upheld the death sentence and the Collin County District Attorney tried to challenge Cornyn’s actions in federal court. (Houston Chronicle, March 25, 2004) See Race and the Death Penalty.