The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld the stay of execution granted to Patrick Murphy by a federal district judge on November 7. The state will not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which means Murphy will not be put to death tonight (November 13, 2019) as scheduled. It’s the second […]
Author: tcadpintern
On November 20th the State of Texas plans to execute Rodney Reed for the 1996 rape and murder of Stacey Stites. In 1998 Reed was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Bastrop County. DNA evidence found on Stites was the only way investigators connected Reed to the crime. However, Reed testified […]
A Lubbock based capital defense office submitted an application for t $7.65 million grant from the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense to increase the work of the West Texas Regional Defender for Capital Cases. According to an article by the Avalanche Journal an approved application would expand the West Texas based office to be […]
Bianca Jagger, an international human right’s activist, Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, and the founder and chair of the Biana Jagger Human Rights Foundation, wrote a death row profile in the April 27, 2010 issue of the Huffington Post titled “A Case for the Supreme Court’”. The article highlights the case of Texas death row […]
On Wednesday, April 28, 2010, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out two death sentences, ordering new punishment trials for both. The decision was made in line with changes in punishment evidence rules ordered by the United States Supreme Court in death penalty cases. Roy Gene Smith, a death row inmate for 20 years, […]
Samuel Bustamante, convicted of the 1998 fatal stabbing of a man, was put to death in Huntsville, Texas on Tuesday April 27, 2010. This execution was Texas’s 7th this year, with at least 7 more scheduled through July. So far the executions that have taken place in Texas this year total 1 less than all […]
The New York Times wrote an editorial piece this week regarding last week’s decision by the United States Supreme Court’s denial to hear the case of Charles Dean Hood. Hood was convicted of murder in 1990 and sentenced to death; however, the prosecuting district attorney and judge in Hood’s trial had recently ended a romantic […]
On Friday, April 23, 2010 the Texas Forensic Science Commission met in Irving, Texas to discuss a number of cases that have been postponed since Governor Rick Perry replaced three of the commission’s members last year. One case under consideration was that of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham (additional coverage available here) was executed in 2004 […]