Texas District Attorney Recommends New Trial for Jewish Death-Row Prisoner Tried Before Anti-Semitic Judge

A Texas dis­trict attor­ney has asked a Dallas judge to over­turn the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Jewish death-row pris­on­er Randy Halprin (pic­tured) because of the vir­u­lent anti-Semitism of the judge who presided over his tri­al and death sen­tence. On September 27, 2022, the sec­ond day of the Jewish high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson filed a legal mem­o­ran­dum with pro­posed find­ings of fact and con­clu­sions of law that rec­om­mend­ed Halprin be grant­ed a new tri­al because his tri­al judge, Vickers Cunningham, ​“har­bored actu­al bias against him at the time of trial.” 

Halprin was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a police offi­cer who respond­ed to a rob­bery com­mit­ted by a group of escaped pris­on­ers, lat­er dubbed the ​“Texas 7,” in 2000. During a three-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing on August 29 – 31, 2022, five of Cunningham’s friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers tes­ti­fied that Cunningham repeat­ed­ly used anti-Semitic slurs to refer to Halprin, who is Jewish. They tes­ti­fied that Cunningham described Halprin and his co-defen­dants as ​“the Mexican, the queer, and the Jew” and said ​“I’m going to get them all the death penal­ty.” He deri­sive­ly called Halprin ​“the g*dd**n k*ke” and ​“the Jew.” Of the Texas 7, he said ​“Every one of them knew when they stepped foot in my court­room, from the Jew to the wetb**k, they were going down.” 

“Here, [Halprin] has estab­lished a Due Process Clause vio­la­tion based on the struc­tur­al error of judi­cial bias in the form of an actu­al, sub­jec­tive bias on the part of the judge at the time of tri­al,” Wilson wrote in the pro­posed find­ings. Cunningham’s repeat­ed use of reli­gious epi­thets to describe Halprin ​“sup­ports the infer­ence that Judge Cunningham’s state of mind at the time of tri­al over­comes the pre­sump­tion ​‘that the tri­al court was neu­tral, detached, and unbi­ased in all phas­es of the tri­al.’” Cunningham’s com­ments, she wrote, ​“demon­strate[ ] actu­al bias against [Halprin] at the time of tri­al because [Halprin] is Jewish.”

“Today’s fil­ing by the office of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson sends a clear mes­sage: the Constitution guar­an­tees a fair tri­al before a fair court, and in the State of Texas, nei­ther the pros­e­cu­tion, nor the defense, nor any review­ing court can let stand a judg­ment hand­ed down by a biased judge,” said Tivon Schardl, Halprin’s attor­ney. ​“Witnesses who brave­ly per­formed their civic duty in a dif­fi­cult case left no doubt that Judge Cunningham har­bored anti-Semitic bias towards Randy Halprin dur­ing his cap­i­tal murder trial.”

Cunningham’s big­otry was not lim­it­ed to the time of tri­al. The wit­ness­es also tes­ti­fied that dur­ing a sub­se­quent failed run for Dallas County District Attorney in 2005 – 2006, Cunningham had said he was run­ning ​“to save Dallas County from the n*****s and the wetb**ks and the Jews,” called Halprin ​“Randy the Jew” and Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck ​“the Jew Scheck,” and described dif­fer­ent peo­ple as ​“a lying Jew,” ​“a greedy Jew,” or a ​“filthy Jew.”

The hear­ing is the sec­ond time a Dallas Criminal Court judge has been asked to deter­mine whether Cunningham’s con­duct enti­tles Halprin to a new tri­al. In a state­ment of find­ings released on October 11, 2021 based on wit­ness affi­davits, Dallas Criminal District Court Judge Lela Mays wrote that ​“Judge Vickers Cunningham pos­sessed anti-Semitic prej­u­dice against Halprin which vio­lat­ed Halprin’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a tri­al in a fair tri­bunal, equal pro­tec­tion, and free exer­cise of reli­gion.” The ​“only rem­e­dy” for Halprin, Mays said, is ​“a new fair trial.” 

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed that rul­ing and remand­ed the case for an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, say­ing that live tes­ti­mo­ny was nec­es­sary before the court could con­clude that Cunningham was biased. 

Halprin is one of two liv­ing mem­bers of the ​“Texas 7,” along with Patrick Murphy, who is also on death row. One of the escapees killed him­self to avoid cap­ture by police. The oth­er four have already been exe­cut­ed, includ­ing Joseph Garcia, who was Latino, and Michael Rodriguez, who was both Latino and Jewish. Both men were tried by Cunningham and were mem­bers of groups against who he har­bored racial or religious animus.

Although Halprin was tried in Dallas County, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office is now han­dling his pros­e­cu­tion because Cunningham’s daugh­ter works for the Dallas County District Attorney.