In a 5-2 order, with two judges dissenting and two others not participating, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the scheduled August 31 execution of Rolando Ruiz (pictured). The order did not specify the reason why the court issued the stay, saying only that after reviewing a new challenge to Ruiz’s death sentence that his lawyers had filed, “we have determined that his execution should be stayed pending further order by this Court.” Although Texas remains the most prolific state in carrying out executions and, along with Georgia, has executed six prisoners in 2016, this is the seventh consecutive time a scheduled Texas execution has been halted or postponed as a result of either a stay, a rescheduled execution date, or the withdrawal of the death warrant. Ruiz’s stay came after his new lawyers filed a petition for relief in the Texas courts seeking relief from his death sentence on the grounds that his trial lawyer unreasonably failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence to spare his life at the punishment phase of his trial, violating his right to effective assistance of counsel, and that the lawyer Texas appointed to represent him in his initial state habeas challenge to his conviction and sentence also unreasonably failed to investigate and present that evidence. Ruiz also claimed that executing him more than two decades after his conviction would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. This was Ruiz’s third death warrant. He first faced execution in 2007, but he received a stay from a federal appeals court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case in May 2015 and he faced a second death warrant earlier this year, when his execution was set for July 27. That execution was rescheduled for Aug. 31, reportedly because Texas failed to provide Ruiz’s lawyers with sufficient notice of the execution. Texas has four more executions scheduled for 2016, with the execution of Robert Mitchell Jennings scheduled for September 14. Its last execution was on April 6. Texas has not gone that long between executions since June 2008, when executions resumed after a nearly nine-month hiatus while the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of lethal injection.
(T. Nashrulla, C. Geidner, and C. McDaniel, “Lengthy Gap In Texas Executions To Continue As State Court Halts Yet Another,” BuzzFeed, August 26, 2016.) See Stays of Execution and Upcoming Executions. Read the order of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granting the stay of execution here.
