Texas Moratorium Network just returned from day one of the hearing in Judge Kevin Fine’s courtroom in Houston on the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty. When we were there, we got a list of scheduled witnesses over the next two weeks.
December 6
Richard Dieter, Death Penalty Information Center
Sandra Thompson, Timothy Cole Advisory Panel member, expert on inadequate discovery
Brian Benken , Prosecution case against John green (defense investigator)
Jim Willis, Prosecution case against John green (defense investigator)
December 7
Brandon Garrett, Law expert on role of eyewitnesses, informants and junk science in wrongful convictions.
Alexandra Natapoff, Expert on snitches
December 8, 9 and perhaps 10
Todd Willingham and Claude Jones witnesses
December 10
Wanda Foglia, Capital Jury Project researcher – expert on risk factor of death qualification of jurors and on distortion of guilt-innocence determination by premature penalty deliberation
December 13
Jennifer Dysart, Eyewitness expert
Jim Marcus, Expert on Texas capital habeas corpus
December 14
Christina Swarns, Histroy of Harris County DA office and race-based jury selection-drawing on documents obtained in other litigation
Sam Sommers, Jury researcher- effects of non-diversity in juries on accuracy of decision making.
December 15
Simon Cole, NAS report and junk science (in general); fingerprint comparison in particular
Sam Gross, Expert-researcher on wrongful convictions
December 16
Bryan Stevenson, Expert on best practices for rooting out race-based jury selection by prosecutors
Rob Owen, Counsel for Ernest Willis
Maurie Levin, Expert on Texas capital clemency procedure
Mark White, former governor of Texas on th eneed for certainty in capital convictions
