For Media Use Only

June 4, 2008

Contact: 512-463-1575, Rose Cardona, Briefing Attorney to Judge Barbara Hervey

On behalf of the Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge Barbara Hervey officially announces the establishment of the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit: “This is a call to action to address the growing concerns with our criminal justice system. Although we applaud all previous studies and dialogue, it is now time to act and move for reform. While more government does not necessarily mean better government, reflection and willingness to improve does respond to the needs of our system and our citizens.”

The Court will continue to work closely with Governor Rick Perry, Senator Rodney Ellis, the innocence projects/clinics, and all parties affected by the criminal justice system, including currently incarcerated individuals who may have been wrongfully convicted. Some of the issues to be addressed by the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit will include:

• Improving the quality of defense counsel available for indigent defendants.
• Implementing procedures to improve eyewitness identification.
• Making recommendations to eliminate improper interrogations and to protect against false confessions.
• Reforming the standards for collection, preservation, and storage of evidence.
• Improving crime lab reliability.
• Improving attorney practices and accountability.
• Adequately compensating the wrongfully convicted.
• Implementing writ training.
• Establishing local, “home rule” protocol for the prevention of wrongful convictions

The Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit intends to focus on the strengths and the weaknesses within the Texas criminal justice system. It is not a forum for any particular group, nor does it embrace the plan of one particular political party. The present “unit” includes:

• Judge Barbara Hervey, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
• Senator Rodney Ellis, Texas Senate
• Mary Anne Wiley, Deputy General Counsel to Governor Rick Perry
• Bill Allison, Clinical Professor of Law/Director, UT Criminal Defense Clinic
• Pat Johnson, Director, Texas DPS Crime Lab
• James McLaughlin, General Counsel/Executive Director, Texas Police Chief’s Association
• Craig Watkins, District Attorney, Dallas
• Jaime Esparza, District Attorney, El Paso
• Jim McReynolds, Texas House of Representatives
• Gary Udashen, Criminal Defense Attorney, Dallas
• Judge Sid Harle, District Judge, San Antonio
• Jim Bethke, Director, Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense

“When it comes to capital punishment, Texas is guilty of failing to protect the innocent”
by Rose Rhoton
Austin American-Statesman
Monday, June 02, 2008

Excerpt from Rose Rhotan’s article in the Austin American-Statesman:

‘I want to say that I hold no grudges.’

These were the final words of my brother Carlos De Luna before he was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for a crime he did not commit. His last words express remarkable forgiveness from an innocent man facing the ultimate miscarriage of justice. Unfortunately, in the 19 years since his execution, the numerous problems that led to his wrongful conviction have never been addressed and continue to plague the Texas capital punishment system. With executions in the state about to resume, I hope that legislators and the courts will learn lessons from my brother’s story.

Carlos was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in six short years, despite overwhelming problems with the case. In 1983, convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez was stabbed to death, and Carlos became a suspect when he was found near the scene shortly after the crime took place. But the crime had all the hallmarks of a violent felon who had a history of knife attacks against women in the area. This individual had repeatedly bragged to friends and family members that he committed the crime and that his “stupid tocayo,” or namesake, had taken the fall. Police and prosecutors ignored the information and refused to look into the alternate suspect who many in the community believe committed the crime.

Instead, prosecutors convicted my brother on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony and no supporting forensic evidence. The main eyewitness told the Chicago Tribune, in the newspaper’s re-investigation of the case, that he has serious doubts about Carlos’ guilt. The identification was made while Carlos was in the backseat of a police car and after the police told the witness they had arrested Carlos near the scene, giving the witness a false sense of certainty that Carlos was guilty.

Unfortunately, my brother’s story is not unique. Far from it. The well-documented problems in his case are unacceptably common. The nature of eyewitness identification, for instance, is often flawed. It plays a role in 75 percent of all DNA exonerations nationwide.

Read the rest of the article.

Send a message to Texas Governor Rick Perry and members of the Texas Legislature protesting the resumption of executions in Texas on June 3.

Derrick Sonnier, is scheduled to be executed in Huntsville on June 3rd.

This will be the first execution in Texas since Sept 25th when Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said, “we close at 5” and refused to accept an appeal 20 minutes late for a man later executed that night. Around 1900 people signed on to a complaint that we submitted asking the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to remove Keller for her unethical action.

Protest at the Texas Capitol

Tuesday, June 3rd at 5:30PM at the Capitol
On the steps at Congress and 11th

Last week, Texas Moratorium Network held a sneak preview of the new film “At the Death House Door” about Rev Carroll Pickett, who attended 95 executions in Texas as chaplain. The New York Times has an article today on the film and Pickett, who will be speaking at the Democrats Against the Death Penalty Caucus at the State Convention of the Texas Democratic Party on Friday, June 6 in Austin in room 6A on Level three of the Austin Convention Center.

From the Times:

The documentary, which will be shown Thursday night on the Independent Film Channel, reveals that Mr. Pickett, a 74-year-old Presbyterian minister, was anguished by his job, and that he finally concluded that the death penalty served neither justice nor morality. He says he believes that some of the men he helped lead to death were innocent.

“After each execution I made a tape on everybody that I walked with to the death chamber,” Mr. Pickett says early in the film as the camera trains on his office, full of boxes of cassette tapes. “I knew I had to talk to somebody, and the only thing in my house at that time was a tape recorder.”

Of all those executions, he was most haunted by that of Carlos De Luna, convicted of stabbing to death a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi, Tex., in 1983. Mr. De Luna asked if he could call the minister Daddy on the day in 1989 when, at 27, he was executed despite his protestations of innocence. Two reporters for The Chicago Tribune wrote a series of articles in 2006 that made a case that Mr. De Luna was wrongfully convicted. Mr. Pickett said he believes that Mr. De Luna was innocent, and the minister’s relationship with the condemned man is a focus of the film.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Prosecutors said Friday that new testing of DNA evidence no longer connects a man sent to death row for a 1993 child slaying that led to the creation of tough sex offender laws, and a state district judge recommended a new trial.

Collin County prosecutors stopped short of saying Michael Blair is innocent of killing strangling and molesting 7-year-old Ashley Estell. But they said evidence used in his 1994 conviction no longer holds up, and acknowledged that another man may have committed the crime.

“There is no good faith argument to support the current conviction in light of the facts and the law as they now exist,” Collin County District Attorney John Roach said in a statement.

State District Judge Webb Biard recommended Friday that Blair be granted a new trial and have his sentence set aside. The case now proceeds to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.