The longest serv­ing inmate on Texas​’s death row died of nat­ur­al caus­es in Dallas County Jail while await­ing a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. Ronald Curtis Chambers spent 35 years on death row await­ing exe­cu­tion. For much of the time, he was con­fined to his cell for 23 hours a day. Chambers was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der and sen­tenced to death in 1975, but his sen­tence was over­turned repeat­ed­ly. He was again sen­tenced to death in 1985 and 1992. James Volberding, who worked on Chamber’s appeals from 1996 to 2008, point­ed to his case as an illus­tra­tion of the flaws in Texas’ death penal­ty sys­tem. According to Volberding, court and pros­e­cu­tion errors were the cause of the long delay and he argued that these delays amount­ed to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. He said that Chambers was a changed man from the per­son who com­mit­ted mur­der at age 20 and was very remorse­ful. The Dallas County dis­trict attor­ney’s office spokes­woman Jamille Bradfield stat­ed on Monday that they were ​“active­ly prepar­ing to retry Mr. Chambers on pun­ish­ment at the time of his death.”

(R. Abshire, ​“Death-Row inmate dies in Dallas await­ing new hear­ing,” Dallas Morning News, November 15, 2010). See Arbitrariness and Time on Death Row.

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