Death Be Not Proud (originally aired March 20, 2005; footnotes last updated May 18, 2005)
Alan goes to Texas to try stopping the execution of a possibly innocent man. The episode references several aspects of the death penalty, some of which are addressed here.
- Texas executions by the numbers. Texas has executed more people than any other state, accounting for 313 of the 885 executions (about a third) in the United States between 1977 and 2003; no other state had executed more than 100 people as of the end of 2003. Texas executed 24 people in 2003, of whom 17 were white and 7 were black. The following graphs show how Texas compares to other states in terms of executions from 1977 to 2003 and in recent years.
- Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which Alan speaks in front of, is a specialized court that is the court of last resort for all criminal legal issues under Texas law. Of the nine justices on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in early 2005, seven were former prosecutors. Most states have civil and criminal cases decided by the same court of last resort; Oklahoma is the only other state that has criminal cases decided as a matter of last resort by a specialized criminal court (appeals in Alabama are initially heard in specially-designated criminal courts but can be appealed to the state's highest court, which hears both civil and criminal appeals).
- Released prisoners. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (on-line here), Texas has released eight innocent people who had been on death row: Vernon McManus (convicted in 1977, charges dismissed in 1987), Randall Dale Adams (convicted in 1977, charges dismissed in 1989), Clarence Brandley (convicted in 1981, charges dismissed in 1990), John C. Skelton (convicted in 1983, acquitted in 1990), Federico M. Macias (convicted in 1984, charges dismissed in 1993), Muneer Deeb (convicted in 1985, acquitted in 1993), Ricardo Aldape Guerra (convicted in 1982, charges dismissed 1997), and Ernest Ray Willis (convicted in 1987, charges dismissed in 2004).
Getting Willis freed did take the work of the law firm Latham & Watkins, which worked on the case for nine years and incurred $3 million in expenses, including six outside experts for doing so. It also involved a long legal battle in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected arguments and evidence that other courts had accepted and that ultimately helped lead to Willis's release. A lower state court recommended in June 2000 that Willis be freed because his constitutional rights had been violated because, among other things, the state had administered antipsychotic drugs to Willis without need or consent and had suppressed a psychological report by the prosecutor's own expert that concluded Willis posed little future danger and that recommended not treating Willis as a death penalty case. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected this recommendation in December 2000.
The case then went to federal court, where Federal Judge Royal Furgeson ruled in August 2004 that Willis should be released because the state had violated his constitutional rights by, among other things, administering antipsychotic drugs without his consent and suppressing a psychological report by the prosecutor's expert that concluded Willis posed little future danger and that recommended not treating Willis as a death penalty case. The Texas Attorney General office's capital crimes section recommended accepting Furgeson's decision, and the local district attorney moved to dismiss the case because of evidence favoring Willis's actual innocence, including the fact that another man who had been executed in 1999 for other crimes had confessed to committing the crime previously attributed to Willis. Willis was freed in October 2004.
- Death row syndrome. The planned execution of Michael Ross, a convicted serial killer, had been delayed as of March 2005 when this episode first ran on the possible grounds that he was no longer mentally competent enough to be executed because of his long experience on death row, a condition that some have called "death row syndrome" even though that term is not recognized by psychiatrists. The Supreme Court held in the 1986 case Ford v. Wainwright (on-line here) that the state may not execute a prisoner who is insane, and some have argued that people on death row may be so affected by the prolonged interval between sentencing and execution that they cannot be validly executed. Ross had declared in October 2004 that he wanted to forego appeals and proceed to his execution. State judges found that Ross was competent to make this decision, but a federal judge did stay the execution and the parties then moved to stay the execution so that a hearing on Ross's competency could be held. Ross was again found to be mentally competent, and he was executed on May 13. The execution was Connecticut's first in almost 45 years. A state press release on the execution is on-line as a PDF here.
- Defendant with sleeping lawyer. Some have criticized the Texas courts for upholding the conviction of Calvin Burdine, who was convicted in 1984 after a trial in which his court-appointed attorney slept repeatedly. Three jurors and the court clerk testified after the trial that they Burdine's lawyer, Joe Cannon, dozed or slept repeatedly during the case, though others testified that they did not.
As with the Willis case, a state court reviewing Burdine's case found that Burdine had been denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel and recommended that he be granted release unless the state wanted to retry him. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals accepted the lower court's finding but issued a one-page opinion in 1995 that Burdine was still not entitled to relief because he had not proved that he would have been acquitted with a competent lawyer. Burdine then petitioned the federal courts for relief. A district court found in 2000 that Burdine was entitled to a new trial, a ruling that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court ultimately affirmed.
Unlike the Willis case, however, state prosecutors planned to try Burdine again. Burdine pled guilty to capital murder in 2003 and received a life sentence.
Sources: Thomas P. Bonczar and Tracy L. Snell, Capital Punishment, 2003, Bureau of Justice Statistics (November 2004) (on-line here). David B. Rottman, Carol R. Flango, Melissa T. Cantrell, Randall Hansen, and Neil LaFountain, State Court Organization, 1998, Bureau of Justice Statistics (June 2000) (on-line here). The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is on-line here. The Death Penalty Information Center has descriptions of cases in which death-row inmates were released on-line here. Latham & Watkins, Texas prisoner to be released after 17 years on death row (October 6, 2004) (release with supporting documents on-line here. Douglas McCollum, The accidental defenders, American Lawyer, January 18, 2005. Willis v. Cockrell, Western District of Texas, No. P-01-CA-20, Amended order granting petition for writ of habeas corpus, available on-line via CourtWeb here. John Christoffersen, Conn. Execution highlights 'syndrome, Associated Press, February 1, 2005. David Wallace-Wells, What is death row syndrome, Slate, February 1, 2005. Burdine v. Johnson, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 99-21034, available on-line as a PDF here.
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