Texas Courts Halt Two Imminent Executions

Texas state courts have halt­ed the exe­cu­tions of two con­demned pris­on­ers who had been fac­ing immi­nent exe­cu­tion dates. On October 4, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the October 10 exe­cu­tion of Randy Halprin (pic­tured, left) and direct­ed a Dallas tri­al court to con­sid­er his claim that the reli­gious big­otry of the judge who presided over his case denied him a fair tri­al before an impar­tial tri­bunal. The pre­vi­ous day, a Henderson County District Court judge with­drew the death war­rant that had sched­uled Randall Mays (pic­tured, right) to die on October 16, amid con­cerns that Mays may be mentally incompetent.

The twin rul­ings were a dra­mat­ic devel­op­ment in the con­tin­u­ing saga involv­ing the Lone Star State’s efforts to exe­cute thir­teen pris­on­ers in the last five months of 2019. A DPIC analy­sis of those cas­es found that they raised trou­bling ques­tions of inno­cence, sig­nif­i­cant­ly flawed legal pro­ceed­ings, junk sci­ence, and dimin­ished cul­pa­bil­i­ty aris­ing from one or more of men­tal ill­ness, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, youth­ful­ness, and chron­ic expo­sure to trauma.

Supported by a coali­tion of nation­al and local Jewish orga­ni­za­tions, Halprin, who is Jewish, filed peti­tions in the state and fed­er­al courts seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion and a new tri­al based upon recent­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence of his tri­al judge’s vir­u­lent­ly anti-Semitic state­ments and beliefs. He sup­port­ed his claim with affi­davits from court per­son­nel who said that his tri­al judge, Vickers Cunningham, dis­par­aged Halprin as ​“a f***in’ Jew” and ​“g**damn k**e,” and made racist com­ments about his Latino co-defen­dants. One court employ­ee said Cunningham had bragged that, dur­ing their tri­al, “[f]rom the w**back to the Jew, they knew they were going to die.” 

Halprin’s defense team began inves­ti­gat­ing Cunningham’s pos­si­ble anti-Semitic bias after learn­ing from a report in The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that Cunningham had put pro­vi­sions in his will that con­di­tioned his chil­dren’s inher­i­tance upon mar­ry­ing a straight, white Christian. Halprin’s cur­rent coun­sel, assis­tant fed­er­al defend­er Tivon Schardl, praised the state court’s deci­sion, as ​“a sig­nal that big­otry and bias are unac­cept­able in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” ​“A fair tri­al requires an impar­tial judge, and Mr. Halprin did not have a fair and neu­tral judge when his life was at stake,” Schardl said.

Mays’ death war­rant was with­drawn by Henderson County District Judge Joe Clayton after defense lawyers moved to have May declared incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. The defense motion said that prison men­tal health per­son­nel had recent­ly diag­nosed Mays with schiz­o­phre­nia and pre­scribed him anti-psy­chot­ic med­ica­tion. A foren­sic psy­chi­a­trist report­ed that Mays’ men­tal health con­di­tion has dete­ri­o­rat­ed, that he is increas­ing­ly delu­sion­al and inco­her­ent, and that he claims the prison guards are poi­son­ing the air vents in his cell. 

Mays was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for killing two coun­ty sheriff’s deputies. The com­pe­ten­cy plead­ing says he believes he is to be exe­cut­ed because he has designed a process for cre­at­ing renew­able ener­gy that threat­ens the inter­ests of the oil com­pa­nies. Judge Clayton wrote that he with­drew the exe­cu­tion date so the court could have time to ​“prop­er­ly review all med­ical records submitted.”