From the Denton Record-Chronicle:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry made a short stop in Denton Friday morning, during the “crush and rush” of campaigning leading up to the primary election on March 2, with early voting already under way.

Perry, a Republican seeking his third four-year term as governor, greeted more than 100 Denton County residents — most of whom were invited by Perry’s campaign through e-mail — at the Jupiter House coffee shop on the Square.

He debated against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and GOP activist Debra Medina at the University of North Texas last month.

Frank Phillips, the county’s elections administrator, said Friday that 4,566 Denton County voters had cast ballots so far — 4,087 Republicans and 479 Democrats.

Perry said Denton County will be important for Republican candidates to win.

“Denton is a very dynamic community. … It’s a powerful GOP stronghold,” he said.

As Perry walked into Jupiter House, about a dozen protesters who were littered throughout the audience started clapping and yelling “Death row, hell no!”

The owners quickly and physically escorted the protesters out of the shop, but they continued to protest with banners on the sidewalk.

UNT student Laura Lamb, one of the organizers of the demonstration, said her fellow protesters attended the event to publicly disagree with Perry and his stance on capital punishment.

“We do not support state-sponsored murder,” Lamb said.

The Austin American-Statesman is reporting that the prosecution, representing the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, has filed a document objecting to the findings issued by the Special Master Judge David Berchelmann.

Texas Moratorium Network filed a complain against Sharon Keller in 2007 that was signed by about 1900 people. For more information on the case visit www.SharonKiller.com.

From the Statesman:

Seeking to revive their case against Judge Sharon Keller, prosecutors argued Wednesday that Keller deserves to be reprimanded or removed from office for refusing to accept a late execution-day appeal in 2007.

In documents filed Wednesday with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which will weigh Keller’s fate, prosecutors objected to a special master’s conclusion that Keller was not to blame for failures that resulted in death row inmate Michael Richard being executed without his final appeal being heard in court.

Dismissing the findings by Special Master David Berchelmann Jr. as irrelevant and misguided, prosecutors said Keller’s conduct in Richard’s case “was clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of her duties … and cast public discredit on the judiciary.”

Keller’s lawyer, Chip Babcock, also filed objections to Berchelmann’s findings, issued last month after he heard four days of testimony in August.

Though emphatically in Keller’s favor, Berchelmann’s findings also criticized Keller for questionable judgment when she refused to keep the court clerk’s office open past 5 p.m. Richard’s lawyers had requested extra time to file an appeal based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that morning.

Babcock urged the commission to disregard Berchelmann’s criticism as irrelevant, noting that Keller was charged with violating the code of judicial ethics and the Texas Constitution — not with exhibiting poor judgment or making questionable decisions.

“The special master explicitly found, based on a thorough and careful review of the evidence, that Judge Keller ‘did not violate any written or unwritten rules or laws,’” Babcock wrote. “The special master’s findings of fact plainly absolve Judge Keller of all of the charges leveled against her … (and) can only be read as an exoneration of her conduct.”

Babcock said he plans to file a formal response to prosecutors’ objections in the near future, and both sides will get a chance to argue their objections before the commission during an as-yet unscheduled meeting.

After that meeting, the 13-member commission will meet in private to decide whether to drop the charges, reprimand Keller or recommend her removal from office. That decision could take weeks, perhaps months, and a removal recommendation would kick off a new inquiry by a specially created seven-member panel of appellate court judges.

In Wednesday’s filings, prosecutors attacked Berchelmann’s two main conclusions:

• That Keller violated no rule or law when she declined to accept the appeal after 5 p.m.
• That lawyers with the Texas Defender Service, or TDS, were to blame for the missed appeal by failing to diligently prepare Richard’s court briefs and declining to pursue available options to file them with the Court of Criminal Appeals after 5 p.m.

Prosecutors argued that Berchelmann improperly portioned out blame as if he were presiding over a negligence lawsuit instead of charges of judicial misconduct.

“The issue here is not TDS’s conduct, but Judge Keller’s conduct,” prosecutors said. “Judge Keller’s conduct on Sept. 25, 2007 should be examined based on what she knew, heard, thought, said, did, decided and failed to do — and not on things that she did not know.”

Read more in print or on line tomorrow.

For Immediate Release
February 17, 2009

Contact: Rob Owen, University of Texas, 512-232-9391, rowen@law.utexas.edu

STATEMENT OF THE LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM FOR HANK SKINNER REGARDING RE-SCHEDULING OF MR. SKINNER’S EXECUTION

“Today, February 17, we received notice for the first time that the judge of the convicting court yesterday withdrew Mr. Skinner’s previously scheduled February 24 execution date, apparently upholding our challenge to the previously issued warrant of execution as void under Texas law.

We are dismayed that the court chose, in the same order, to re-schedule Mr. Skinner’s execution for March 24. This unseemly haste to execute Mr. Skinner ignores the growing public concern and outcry over the unanswered questions about Mr. Skinner’s guilt. Now, more than ever, DNA testing is necessary to resolve those doubts.

Setting a March 24 execution date also means that Mr. Skinner’s pending lawsuit against the Gray County District Attorney in the United States Supreme Court, seeking the much-needed DNA testing, must now be resolved under needless and entirely artificial time pressures. Given that the District Attorney stands to benefit directly from that undue haste, it is especially disappointing that the court chose to press forward with Mr. Skinner’s execution on March 24.

In addition, there is a very serious legal question faced by Sweet Lawyers – personal injury attorneys, whether the trial court even has the authority to set an execution date for someone, like Mr. Skinner, whose post-conviction challenges to his conviction and death sentence have never been heard by the Texas courts.

We remain committed to obtaining the DNA testing our client says will prove his innocence, and will take every available legal step to that end.”

Hank Skinner’s execution date in Texas has been rescheduled from Feb 24 to March 24 because of a problem with the death warrant.

Actions for Hank Skinner:

Write, call, fax or email your own letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Texas Governor Rick Perry.  Urge them to stay the execution to allow testing of DNA. In the subject line of your emails or in any letters to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, write “Attention Case of Hank Skinner #999143″.

Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed in Texas on March 24 for three murders he maintains he didn’t commit. Several key pieces of biological evidence from the crime scene have not been tested. DNA testing could prove Skinner’s innocence or confirm his guilt, but prosecutors are opposing Skinner’s appeals and seeking to execute him. 

Below is an article from the Project Director of The Medill Innocence Project .

Will Texas Soon Execute Another Innocent Man? Our Reporting Challenges Verdict As Clock Ticks

 

THE LATEST: Condemned Man’s Lawyers Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court

By David Protess

February 12, 2010

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is under fire for allegedly obstructing an investigation into the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004 — despite forensic tests proving he did not murder his three young children.

 

Four years earlier, Gary Graham was carried to Texas’ death chamber defiantly proclaiming his innocence in the face of new evidence that even the murder victim’s widow called “reasonable doubt.”

Investigative stories have revealed that Ruben Cantu in 1989 and Carlos DeLuna in 1993 likely suffered the same unjust fate at the hands of Texas executioners.

 

Now the clock is ticking on another Texas death row inmate who has steadfastly maintained his innocence – with credible evidence to support his claim. The condemned man is Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner, and much of that evidence was unearthed by the Medill Innocence Project and reported in the January 28 and 29 editions of the Texas Tribune, “Case Open” and “Case Open: The Investigation”. Yet, Skinner faces death by lethal injection on February 24, less than two weeks from now.

 

Texas continues to lead the nation in executions. But will the state earn the dubious distinction of executing five innocents in two decades? Hank Skinner’s fate lies in the hands of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Gov. Perry and the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Here is a synopsis of the case, spotlighting the evidence developed by Medill student-journalists who traveled to Texas’ death row and to the crime scene in search of the truth. For a more detailed account, read my testimony to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and today’sappeal by Skinner’s lawyers to the Supreme Court.

 

I will continue to report about the Skinner case on this site until it reaches finality.

 

Hank Skinner, January 20, 2010
Caleb Bryant Miller, The Texas Tribune

 

Hank Skinner, age 47, was convicted of bludgeoning to death his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and fatally stabbing her two adult sons in their Pampa, Texas home on New Year’s Eve of 1993. Skinner was convicted of the crimes in 1994 and sentenced to death in 1995. He is scheduled to be executed on February 24 (UPDATE: Changed to March 24).

 

The state’s case against Skinner was entirely circumstantial. He has consistently professed his innocence, there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder weapons and no eyewitness or apparent motive for the crime. Skinner indisputably was in the home at the time of the murders, but claims he had passed out from mixing large quantities of alcohol and codeine. When he awoke, he stumbled to a neighbor’s residence to report the murders, according to Skinner.

 

But the neighbor, Andrea Reed, testified that Skinner made incriminating statements about the crime and ordered her not to call the police. That was enough for the jury to find him guilty, and, although Skinner had no history of violence that would remotely explain the horrific murders (his worst offense was a conviction for assault), he was sentenced to death.

 

Our investigation

 

The Medill Innocence Project first became involved in the case in the fall of 1999 when a reporter at the Associated Press in Houston raised questions about Skinner’s guilt. Eight investigative reporting students made two trips to the Panhandle town in 1999-2000 to interview sources and plow through documents. They returned with grave reservations about whether justice had been done.

 

For one thing, Andrea Reed, the state’s star witness, recanted her trial testimony in an audio-taped interview. Reed told the student-journalists that she had been intimidated by the authorities into concocting a false story against Skinner. “I did not then and do not now feel like he was physically capable of hurting anybody,” Reed said.

 

For another, toxicology tests on Skinner’s blood and statements by experts revealed he would have been nearly comatose on the night of the crimes, certainly lacking the strength, balance and agility to commit the triple homicide. This finding is consistent with Reed’s observation of Skinner when he entered her home after the crime: “He was falling into the walls and stuff. He was staggering, falling into stuff,” she said in the taped interview.

 

Other residents of Pampa told the student-journalists in videotaped interviews that the more likely perpetrator was Robert Donnell, Twila’s uncle. Donnell had been “hitting on” his niece at a New Year’s Eve party shortly before the slayings. Rebuffing his advances, she left the party frightened, her uncle following behind, according to the witnesses. (A close friend of Twila’s said she confided to being raped by her uncle in the past.)

 

The day after the crime, another witness claimed to have seen Donnell scrubbing the interior of his pick-up truck, removing the rubber floorboards and replacing the carpeting. Perhaps most telling, a windbreaker just like the one the uncle often wore was found at the scene – directly next to his niece’s body. The jacket was covered with human hairs and sweat.

 

Yet evidence from the windbreaker has never been scientifically tested. Moreover, prosecutors have steadfastly opposed DNA tests on two blood-stained knives, skin cells found underneath Twila’s fingernails, vaginal swabs and hairs removed from her hand – even though forensic tests on one of the hairs proved it did not come from Skinner. (The physical evidence remains sealed, but the courts have acceded to prosecutors’ demands not to conduct the tests.) In a death row interview with the student-journalists, Skinner said he was innocent and welcomed new tests on the old evidence.

 

“They have no right to kill me because I’m innocent, innocent, innocent.” Hank Skinner to the Texas Tribune, January 28, 2010.

 

Another troubling aspect of the case is the background of Skinner’s trial lawyer, Harold Lee Comer. Formerly the District Attorney of Gray County, Comer had prosecuted Skinner for two offenses, theft and assault. After resigning from office and pleading guilty in a drug scandal, Comer was appointed at taxpayer’s expense to represent Skinner at his capital murder trial — without the required hearing to determine whether he had a conflict-of-interest.

 

The trial judge, a personal friend of Comer’s, paid him roughly the same amount to represent Skinner as the former DA owed to the IRS. Comer failed to request DNA testing, or present compelling evidence about the alternative suspect. And, at the sentencing hearing, he failed to object to using Skinner’s prior convictions — which he had prosecuted — to justify the death penalty.

 

When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the claim that Skinner had been ineffectively represented by Comer, a Texas court set his execution date. In light of the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham, Gary Graham, Ruben Cantu and Carlos DeLuna, the specter of wrongful executions now hangs over Texas’ system of capital punishment.

 

Will Texas next put to death a man who has steadfastly professed his innocence and whose lawyer was his legal adversary — without even conducting DNA tests to be sure the right man will be punished for the crime?

 

Not much time will tell.

In the video below David Dow discusses why he wrote his new book “The Autobiography of an Execution” and why he thinks the death penalty is wrong. Selected by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Writers program, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION has received glowing early reviews and praise (see below for more). David also recently appeared on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, you can listen to the interview here.

If you can not see the embedded video, click here to watch at BookVideos.tv.

David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network. He lives in Houston, Texas.  His new book is “The Autobiography of an Execution” (Click to buy on Amazon) 


As a lawyer, David R. Dow has represented over 100 death row cases. Many of his clients have died. Most were guilty. Some might have been innocent. The Autobiography of an Execution is his deeply personal story about justice, death penalty, and a lawyer’s life.

It is a chronicle of a life lived at paradoxical extremes: Witnessing executions and then coming home to the loving embrace of his wife and young son, who inquire about his day. Waging moral battles on behalf of people who have committed abhorrent crimes. Fighting for life in America’s death penalty capital, within a criminal justice system full of indifferent and ineffectual judges. Racing against time on behalf of clients who have no more time. 


Upcoming Book Signings by David Dow

Monday, February 15th – Brazos Bookstore – Houston, TX
Wednesday, February 17th – Books & Books – Miami, FL
Tuesday, February 23rd – Book People – Austin, TX
Wednesday, February 24th – Barnes & Noble – San Antonio, TX
Saturday, February 27th – Politics & Prose – Washington, DC

“David Dow’s extraordinary memoir lifts the veil on the real world of representing defendants on death row. It will stay with me a long time.”
—Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine

“Defending the innocent is easy. David Dow fights for the questionable. He is tormented, but relentless, and takes us inside his struggle with candor and insight, shudders and all.”
—Dave Cullen, author of Columbine

“For a lot of good reasons, and some that are not so good, executions in the U.S. are carried out in private. The voters, the vast majority of whom support executions, are not allowed to see them. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION is a riveting and compelling account of a Texas execution written and narrated by a lawyer in the thick of the last minute chaos. It should be read by all those who support state sponsored killing.”
—John Grisham, author of The Innocent Man

“An unsparing indictment of capital punishment in America and the legal system that enables it . . . . In this deft page-turner, Dow brings the reader into the legal world, as he and his colleagues tried nearly every legal gambit to have Quaker spared, in the days, hours and minutes before his time of execution. The author is equally skilled at evoking the personal toll created by the trial—the sleepless nights, the endless work, the neglect of a lovingly portrayed wife and son, who nevertheless sustained and inspired him. A book of uncompromising honesty and moral beauty.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In an argument against capital punishment, Dow’s capable memoir partially gathers its steam from the emotional toll on all parties involved, especially the overworked legal aid lawyers and their desperate clients. The author, the litigation director of the Texas Defender Service and a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, respects the notion of attorney-client privilege in this handful of real-life legal outcomes, some of them quite tragic, while acknowledging executions are ‘not about the attorneys,’ but ‘about the victims of murder and sometimes their killers’ . . . In the end, Dow’s book is a sobering, gripping and candid look into the death penalty.”
—Publishers Weekly