Upcoming Executions
Click for a list of upcoming scheduled executions in Texas.
Innocence
The death penalty puts innocent people at risk of execution.
Todd Willingham
Todd Willingham was wrongfully executed under Governor Rick Perry on February 17, 2004.

Albert Burrell, an innocent man who spent 13 years on death row in Louisiana, will be a special guest at the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty on October 30 at the Texas Capitol in Austin at 2 PM. He will join exonerees Shujaa Graham, Curtis McCarty, Ron Keine, Derrick Jamison and Greg Wilhoit at the march. Albert is coming courtesy of Witness to Innocence.

After spending 13 years on death row, Albert Burrell was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on January 3, 2001, shortly after the Louisiana Attorney General dismissed charges against him and his co-defendant, Michael Graham. They had been sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder of an elderly couple. Their convictions were thrown out because of a lack of physical evidence and suspect witness testimony used at trial. Albert came within 17 days of a scheduled execution in 1996 before his attorneys won a stay. Prosecutor Dan Grady acknowledged that the case was weak and “should never have been brought to [the] grand jury” to begin with.

During the trial, prosecutors withheld key information from the defense, failed to produce any physical evidence, and relied only on witness testimony, which has since been discredited. Dismissing the charges, the attorney general’s office cited a “total lack of credible evidence” and stated, “Prosecutors would deem it a breach of ethics to proceed to trial.” DNA tests later proved that blood found at the victims’ home did not belong to Albert or Michael Graham. The trial attorneys appointed to defend Albert were later disbarred for other reasons.

Upon his release, Albert was issued a denim jacket several sizes too large and a $10 check for transportation. He climbed into his stepsister Estelle’s pickup truck and rode to her small ranch in East Texas. Maintaining his innocence, Albert said, “I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” referring to the crime.

Albert currently lives and works in Center, Texas, and since his release has been active in the movement against the death penalty with other exonerated former death row prisoners.

The annual march is organized by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations, including the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Texas Moratorium Network, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Death Penalty Free Austin, and Kids Against the Death Penalty.

Former Texas Governor Mark White said in Newsweek about Todd Willingham: “If there’s no arson, there’s no crime, and, therefore, he is innocent.”

Below is a video of Governor White speaking about Todd Willingham and the death penalty after he delivered the summation on behalf of Todd Willingham’s family members at the Court of Inquiry in Austin on October 14, 2010.

Video by Texas Moratorium Network.

Sharon Keller says she plans to run for re-election in 2012.

From the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board:  “the technical victory doesn’t erase the commission’s written conclusion that Keller had cast “public discredit on the judiciary.”

From Texas Lawyer:

Breaking her silence after three years, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller says she feels “vindicated” by a special court of review’s decision to vacate the State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s public warning and charges against her.

Although some reporters have written that the three-justice court of review’s Oct. 11 decision in In Re: Honorable Sharon Keller was only a technical victory for Keller, she doesn’t see it that way.

“I won,” Keller says. “People can call it what they want.”
Keller, a member of the CCA since 1995 and its presiding judge since 2000, also says she will seek re-election in 2012. “I have always planned on doing that,” she says.
Her judicial conduct case played out against the backdrop of debate over the death penalty. Dubbed “Sharon Killer” by some anti-death penalty activists, Keller has experienced not only the commission’s investigation and prosecution of its charges against her but also critical media coverage and protests at her home.
“It’s been a three-year-long ordeal,” Keller says.

Witness to an Execution: Capital Punishment in America with Thomas Cahill, David R. Dow, and Robert K. Elder at the Texas Book Festival in Austin.

Date: Saturday, October 16, 2010
Time: 4:00 – 5:00
Location: C-SPAN/Book TV Tent on grounds of Texas Capitol in Austin

As the state well-known for executing the most number of prisoners, Texas is a natural for a penetrating look at capital punishment. The writers on this panel have all examined Texas’ Death Row, whether as observers or active participants in the legal process.

Jill Patterson is a Full Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Texas Tech University. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared most recently in Texas Monthly, Colorado Review, Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. She works as case storyteller for the West Texas Regional Public Defenders Office for Capital Cases. In this capacity, she reviews court transcripts, police records, medical and education records, and interviews defendants, family members, and other witnesses in order to tell a story used for mitigation purposes during a capital trial.

Authors:
Robert K. Elder
David R. Dow
Thomas Cahill
Moderated By: Jill Patterson

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