Entries tagged with “James Grigson”
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Dec 26, 2019
Billy Joe Wardlow Faces Execution in Texas Based on False Evidence of Future Dangerousness
Billy Joe Wardlow (pictured) was 18 years old, when he killed 82-year-old Carl Cole during a botched attempt to steal Cole’s car so that Wardlow and his girlfriend could pursue their fantasy of running away from their abusive homes in Carson, Texas to start a new life in Montana. Wardlow, who had no prior history of violence, has regretted his action ever since. In the cover story for the Winter 2020 issue of the magazine The American Scholar,…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Upcoming Executions
,Dec 10, 2019
Texas Set to Execute Travis Runnels Based on “Expert” Testimony of Prosecution Investigator Whose False Testimony Has Put 15 on Death Row
Texas is preparing to execute Travis Runnels (pictured) on December 11, 2019 based on the “expert” testimony of a prosecution investigator whose false depiction of prison conditions has helped to put fifteen defendants on the state’s death row. If Runnels is executed, he will be the third person put to death in Texas this year after former Texas Special Prosecution Unit criminal investigator, A.P. Merillat provided false testimony at their…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Clemency
,Nov 27, 2018
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Upholds Death Sentence Based on False Psychiatric Testimony
For the second time in less than six months, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has upheld a death sentence that the trial court, lawyers for the prosecution and defense, and mental health experts all agree should not be carried out. On November 21, 2018, in an unpublished and unsigned opinion that misspelled death-row prisoner Jeffery Wood’s name, the court rejected a recommendation by the Kerr County District Court to overturn…
Policy Issues
Intellectual Disability
,Mental Illness
,Sentencing Data
,Executions Overview
,Oct 08, 2018
Law Review: Junk Mental Health Science and the Texas Death Penalty
Junk science is “enabling and perpetuating grave miscarriages of justice” in Texas death-penalty cases. So concludes Professor James Acker in his article, Snake Oil With A Bite: The Lethal Veneer of Science and Texas’s Death Penalty, published in the latest issue of the Albany Law Review. Acker’s article highlights the heightened risks of injustice from pseudo-science and junk science in capital cases in Texas, one of the few states that…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Clemency
,Dec 08, 2017
Texas District Attorney Asks State to Spare Life of Man She Prosecuted Under Controversial “Law of Parties”
The Texas prosecutor who sought and obtained the death penalty almost 20 years ago against Jeffery Wood (pictured), a man who never killed anyone, has now asked that his sentence be reduced to life in prison. In a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, sent in August and obtained December 7 by the Texas Tribune, Kerr County District Attorney Lucy Wilke asked the board to recommend that Governor Greg Abbott grant Wood…
Policy Issues
Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jun 09, 2017
Duane Buck’s Lawyer Discusses How Future Dangerousness Taints Texas Death Penalty System
Thirty years ago, filmmaker Errol Morris, who directed the documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” helped to exonerate Texas death-row prisoner Dale Adams, falsely accused of murdering a police officer. During the course of making the film, Morris met the notorious Texas prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, who routinely testified that capital defendants — including the innocent Mr. Adams — posed a risk of future…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Dec 08, 2016
Experts Say Texas’ Future Dangerousness Concept Is Based on Junk Science
Since 1973, juries in Texas have had to determine whether a defendant presents a future danger to society before imposing a death sentence. But while they have found that each of the 244 men and women currently on the state’s death row poses “a continuing threat to society,” experts argue that juries cannot accurately predict a defendant’s…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Oct 13, 2016
Texas Executions Drop to Lowest Level in 20 Years
Texas is poised to have the fewest number of executions in 20…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Clemency
,New Voices
,Aug 19, 2016
Diverse Range of Voices Call for Sparing Jeff Wood, Who Never Killed Anyone, from Execution in Texas
As his August 24 execution date approaches, Jeffrey Wood’s case has garnered mounting attention from groups and individuals calling on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to commute Wood’s sentence. These diverse voices include a conservative Texas state representative, a group of evangelical leaders, and the editorial boards of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several Texas newspapers, among…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Aug 04, 2016
Texas Prisoner Who Did Not Kill Anyone Challenges Execution, Use of False Psychiatrist Testimony to Condemn Him to Die
Lawyers for Jeffery Wood (pictured), a Texas death row prisoner who is scheduled to be executed August 24 despite undisputed evidence that he has never killed anyone, have filed a new petition in state court challenging his death sentence on multiple grounds. They argue that Wood cannot be subject to the death penalty because he neither killed nor intended for anyone to be killed and was not even aware the robbery in which a codefendant killed a store clerk…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Aug 31, 2009
INNOCENCE: “Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?”
In a thorough and penetrating article published in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers further evidence that Texas probably executed an innocent man in 2004. Grann carefully examines all the evidence that was used in the two-day trial in 1992 to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of murder by arson of his three young children. It is now well established through a series of investigations by other fire experts that the…