Texas Death Sentence Vacated for Mentally Ill and Intellectually Disabled Man After Half-Century on Death Row — And Nearly 40 Years Without a Lawyer

By the time 21-year-old Clarence Curtis Jordan shot a man dur­ing a gro­cery store bur­glary in 1977, he had been strug­gling for most of his life with hal­lu­ci­na­tions and intel­lec­tu­al deficits. His IQ score placed him in the bot­tom 0.5% of the pop­u­la­tion. He iden­ti­fied the pres­i­dent as ​“John Hill” and said he often saw ​“old, weird, burnt-up look­ing peo­ple” watch­ing him. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) found him incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed in 1988. But Mr. Jordan then fell through the cracks of an inef­fi­cient prison sys­tem, and he lan­guished on death row with­out an attor­ney for the next four decades. On April 9, 2026, Mr. Jordan’s 70^th birth­day, the TCCA vacat­ed his death sen­tence. Now bedrid­den due to a stroke and oth­er med­ical issues, Mr. Jordan will be resen­tenced to life and eli­gi­ble for parole — an untime­ly res­o­lu­tion to one of the country’s old­est cas­es on death row. 

Capital defense attor­ney Ben Wolff stum­bled across Mr. Jordan’s case — lit­er­al­ly — in 2023. He was at the prison to vis­it his client Syed Rabbani, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er whose men­tal ill­ness was so severe that he had been moved to a hos­pi­tal wing. Mr. Rabbani was one of about 100 ​“lost and found” crim­i­nal appeals in the Houston area that court offi­cials dis­cov­ered while work­ing through the COVID-19 back­log, cas­es which had seen no action for years or decades. Mr. Jordan was Mr. Rabbani’s neigh­bor in the med­ical unit, and Mr. Wolff tried to speak with him to deter­mine if his case too had been for­got­ten. ​“When I asked some ques­tions, he made eye con­tact and stuck out his tongue like he was strain­ing to talk, but he was unable to talk,” Mr. Wolff told the Houston Landing. 

Mr. Wolff, who directs Texas’ pub­lic defense office for post-con­vic­tion cap­i­tal appeals, dis­cov­ered that Mr. Jordan had not had a lawyer since he was found incom­pe­tent in 1988. A judge had inquired about the case sev­er­al times over the years — in 2000, 2004, and 2017 — but nei­ther the judge nor state pros­e­cu­tors thought it nec­es­sary to find him rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Mr. Wolff quick­ly moved to take Mr. Jordan’s case and then sub­mit­ted a peti­tion ask­ing the TCCA to vacate his death sen­tence. His argu­ment rest­ed on two points: the jury instruc­tions at Mr. Jordan’s tri­al con­strained jurors from prop­er­ly con­sid­er­ing evi­dence of his men­tal ill­ness and cog­ni­tive deficits, and Mr. Jordan’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty exempt­ed him from exe­cu­tion under Atkins v. Virginia (2002). 

In a brief 8‑page opin­ion, the TCCA agreed with Mr. Wolff’s argu­ment that the jury ​“did not have an ade­quate vehi­cle through which it might assess [Mr. Jordan’s] cog­ni­tive and psy­chi­atric dys­func­tion,” and Mr. Jordan was thus denied ​“the indi­vid­u­al­ized sen­tenc­ing deter­mi­na­tion that the Eighth Amendment demands.” The court acknowl­edged that ​“the spe­cial issues as they exist­ed in the pre-Penry era were inad­e­quate to allow a jury to con­sid­er and give effect to [key] types of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence” includ­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, men­tal ill­ness, and child­hood trau­ma. Because Mr. Jordan’s first claim was suc­cess­ful, the TCCA did not reach his Atkins claim.

The TCCA only briefly men­tioned its own past incom­pe­ten­cy rul­ing, in 1988, and the sub­se­quent decades-long delay in Mr. Jordan’s case. However, that ear­li­er rul­ing pre­viewed the very over­sight issues that led to Mr. Jordan falling through the cracks. The Supreme Court held in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) that, based on long­stand­ing com­mon law prin­ci­ples and a nation­al con­sen­sus, ​“insane” defen­dants could not be exe­cut­ed — but the states were left the dis­cre­tion to devel­op pro­ce­dures deter­min­ing insan­i­ty. When Mr. Jordan was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in 1987, his case became the first in Texas to be reviewed for com­pe­ten­cy under Ford. Yet Texas had no law describ­ing how to eval­u­ate exe­cu­tion com­pe­ten­cy; the leg­is­la­ture had ​“inex­plic­a­bly” removed a statute on that issue when it over­hauled its legal code in the 1970s. ​“At a loss for any oth­er alter­na­tive,” the judge invent­ed his own pro­ce­dures to find Mr. Jordan incom­pe­tent and held that he should be reeval­u­at­ed every 90 days. 

The TCCA upheld those pro­ce­dures but not­ed the ​“grave need” for the leg­is­la­ture to act, as courts had no con­sis­tent path to fol­low when iden­ti­fy­ing and reassess­ing com­pe­ten­cy. The court also lament­ed that Ford ​“only pro­hibits exe­cu­tion of the insane and does not itself require treat­ment,” leav­ing courts to ​“sim­ply await spon­ta­neous san­i­ty to return.” The jus­tices wrote that “[t]reatment is a neces­si­ty, yet, much to the dis­may of the tri­al court, appli­cant, the State and this Court, none is statu­to­ri­ly pro­vid­ed.” The leg­is­la­ture did not estab­lish pro­ce­dures for anoth­er decade. By that time, Mr. Jordan’s appoint­ed attor­ney was long gone and the judge’s 90-day assess­ment order had appar­ent­ly been forgotten. 

The day after the TCCA final­ly vacat­ed Mr. Jordan’s death sen­tence in April 2026, the Harris County District Attorney’s office applaud­ed the deci­sion and announced that the state would not seek a new pun­ish­ment pro­ceed­ing. This is ​“what jus­tice looks like,” the DA’s office said, despite the near­ly 40-year delay. Mr. Jordan will be resen­tenced to life with parole and will like­ly be eli­gi­ble for parole imme­di­ate­ly based on the length of his incar­cer­a­tion. According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s Census Database, Mr. Jordan was among the 20 longest-serv­ing death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in the coun­try before the rul­ing. ​“He’s been on death row basi­cal­ly as long as I’ve been alive,” Mr. Wolff said.