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.

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