He was a 60-year-old Cuban named Luis Dubegal-Paez. He was an illegal immigrant housed in the Rolling Plains Detention Center near Abilene. He had been making “sick call” regularly since January 2008 while in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Service (“ICE”), complaining about intolerable pain in his chest. Nurses, not doctors, gave him cough medicine and Tylenol for the chest pains. Two months after Dubegal-Paez complained about the chest pains and received no medical assistance ICE inspectors toured the facility in which the detainee was housed to see if it met ICE’s “detention standards.” The inspectors found the medical assistance provided to the detainees was “acceptable,” despite the fact that the facility had only eight vocational nurses with limited nursing or doctor supervision—according to the Houston Chronicle (Feb. 5, 2010).             Several weeks after the ICE inspection, Dubegal-Paez collapsed and died of a heart attack in March 2008. The Chronicle reported: “The [Dubegal-Paez] case highlights what critics have called pervasive problems with ICE’s enforcement of detention standards.”             The Chronicle obtained through the Freedom of Information Act more than 800 pages of inspection reports which revealed ICE inspectors had given “positive reviews” to some of its detention facilities ...

Last Friday (Jan. 29, 2010) the Texas Forensic Science Commission conducted its first meeting under the leadership of Chairman John Bradley, the District Attorney of Williamson County. Bradley, who has become a lightning rod of criticism, was appointed to the Commission last September by Gov. Rick Perry after the governor’s controversial decision to remove former Commission Chairman Sam Bassett in the midst of Bassett’s efforts to conduct an open and full hearing in the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Willingham’s case has drawn immense national and international media attention since his February 1994 execution by the State of Texas because of a growing number of reports by forensic fire scientists which have concluded that Willingham did not intentionally set the fire that killed his three small children in a house fire in December 1991—a fire that led to Willingham’s capital murder conviction and eventual execution.             Bradley’s first official decision after his appointment was to cancel an October hearing Bassett had set in the Willingham case—a decision Bassett had made based on a report by famed Maryland forensic fire expert Craig Beyler which lent serious credibility to claims by media and anti-death penalty groups that the state of Texas executed an innocent ...

Death penalty cases are the most difficult to defend. These cases require a tremendous amount of resources and investigation to properly present to a jury. The weight of the cases, not only from the work involved but the fact that a human life is at stake, create stress that can cause death penalty attorneys to make unintended mistakes. I have blogged several times in the past about “bad lawyers” in death penalty cases who are in the business just to make money, to do the least amount of work possible, and not give a damn what happens to their clients. These kinds of attorneys are legion in the death penalty industry.               But Kenneth Trotter is not one of those attorneys. This young and inexperienced attorney was appointed, along with two more experienced attorneys named Gary Dozier and Frank Ralph, to defend Holly Wood. The name of the killer reflects that Holly Wood did not become the “star” his parents hoped he would when they named him. He grew up to be borderline mentally retarded, a man who had recurring problems with women and alcohol. He drank too much and abused too many women. In 1993 Holly Wood broke into the ...

State District Court Judge David Berchelmann was selected by the Texas Commission of Judicial Conduct last year to hear misconduct charges leveled against Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Court Judge Sharon Keller in response to her conduct surrounding the execution of Michael Wayne Richard on September 25, 2007.             The Keller case has received national and international media attention, fueled more by misinformation than fact. On January 21, 2010, Judge Berchelmann issued a 16-page report which effectively exonerated Judge Keller of any judicial misconduct in the Richard case. The Berchelman report concluded—a conclusion I drew and have written about in various venues—that Richard’s defense team, the Texas Defender Service, “bears the bulk of fault for what occurred on September 25, 2007.”             In a April 20, 2009 blog posted here titled “Judge Keller Not the Only Village Idiot,” I presented the following indictment of Richard’s defense team:             I will make my case against Richard’s TDS attorneys with the “facts” set forth in the February 19 “notice of formal proceedings” against Judge Keller issued by the Commission and from “facts” existing in the public record..             Fact #1 – While there was no written “execution day protocol” in place in the CCA on the day ...

              Last year the State of Texas executed 24 individuals. Those executions pale in comparison to the 27 individuals killed by Harris County law enforcement agencies during the same period. Harris County police-inflicted deaths are double the national average according to a Houston Chronicle report (Jan. 17, 2010.             While the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed the execution of mentally ill persons, this judicial concern has not slowed law enforcement agencies from killing them. Five of those killed or injured by police gunfire in Harris County last year were identified as being mentally ill, according to the Chronicle report.             Arlene Kelly understands the problem of mentally ill people being killed by law enforcement officers. Her daughter, Colleen, was killed by the police in 1999 after the cops were called by the teenager’s psychiatrist. Arlene Kelly was so disturbed by the police-inflicted death of her daughter that she formed Civilians Down, a citizens group that monitors police shootings of the mentally ill.             “I think cop culture hasn’t change, and it needs to change,” Kelly told the Chronicle. “If it doesn’t change, there’s just going to be more and more unnecessary shootings, even though law enforcement agencies say they are justified.”             Not one ...

              Proponents of the death penalty will never cease the futile effort to prove the death penalty serves as a deterrent. Countless reputable national and international studies have consistently demonstrated that it does not. Nonetheless, occasional localized studies will rear their ugly heads with headlines like the one that appeared in the Houston Chronicle on January 7, 2010: “Texas study: Death penalty deters killers.”             This latest study was conducted by researchers at Sam Houston State University (which, coincidentally happens to be located in Huntsville where all Texas executions are carried out) and Duke University. Sam Houston criminologist Raymond Teske and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concluded that there is a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas following each execution carried out by the state. These findings were based on executions carried out in the state between 1994 and 2005.             Writing in the most recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, the researchers offered this conclusion restated in the Chronicle account: “Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions.”             I wouldn’t dare dispute the statistical findings of these ...

Many death penalty opponents believe that once it is undisputedly established that an innocent person has been executed, the ground swell of public opinion will be such that the death penalty will be abolished. I used to subscribe to the same notion, and while admittedly the rash of wrongful convictions disclosed in recent years has contributed significantly to a national draw down of support for the death penalty, I no longer believe the execution of an innocent person is the proverbial “silver bullet” that will slay the death penalty monster. There have simply been too many wrongful conviction tragedies to muster sufficient collective anger and indignation to defeat the powerful evil forces of the death penalty.             The New York Innocence Project released its annual report about exonerations for 2009. The report revealed that twelve states wrongfully convicted 27 people who spent a total of 421 years in prisons for crimes they did not commit. Were these injustices tragic? Yes. Am I angry and shocked? Somewhat – but mostly I have come to accept injustice as par for the course in our criminal justice system. I was in a recent discussion with my brother-in-law about terrorism. He expressed the view that ...

The New Year has arrived, and the State of Texas has resumed its record-setting march in the death penalty arena. The State already has six executions scheduled in 2010.             Most people in the “free world” (as it is called by those incarcerated) celebrated the advent of the New Year. Fireworks lit up the midnight skies, alcohol was consumed aplenty, and slogans of change were pronounced by all. It is amazing that people celebrate the passing of an old year and the coming of a new one when, in fact, it only signifies we’re all just one step closer to our inevitable demise. Those who love life seem to welcome its passing the most. Strange behavior, to say the least!             But the coming of a new year on death row does not invite celebration, only foreboding. The date with the executioner draws nearer. While the condemned inmate may welcome the coming year as an opportunity to have yet another appeal heard and decided, he cannot shake the dread that accompanies it. A denial—and most appeals are now met with denial—eliminates yet another avenue of hope. The “writ” hope is a vicious, mean beast – the arguments, cases, and persuasion the death ...

              The year draws to a close. It has been a rough death penalty year because there have been 55 executions in this nation thus far—twenty-three of them in the State of Texas alone. Ohio became the first state to employ a one drug method of execution.             The one bright spot in the midst of this state-imposed mayhem is that the imposition of the death sentence has declined nationwide in recent years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Richard Dieter, Director of the DPIC, explains the reason for the decline: “I think it’s the mistakes” that have become a fixture in the death penalty system. “I think it’s the awareness jurors have that they might learn something five or 10 years later that would change their opinion, and they just don’t know. There are just so many cases where allegedly guilty people have been freed. People are just somewhat hesitant about using the death penalty. Prosecutors know that, and so they’re seeking less.”             The Texas Judiciary System also reported significant declines in the imposition of the death sentence across the state, including Harris County. Use of the death sentence has steadily declined in Texas since fiscal year 1999-2000 when ...

              James Bain spent 35 years in the Florida prison system for a crime he did not commit. That’s the longest period of incarceration for any of the 246 individuals who have been exonerated by DNA since 1989. Bain was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1974 after he was identified by a 9-year-old boy at the assailant who kidnapped and raped the boy.             That James Bain spent 35 years in prison as an innocent man because the criminal justice system failed him is a tragedy. But what’s even more tragic is Bain’s benign acceptance of the injustice. He was quoted by the news media as saying: “No, I’m not angry because I’ve got God.” He told a CNN interviewer that Florida prosecutors were just doing “their job” when they wrongfully convicted him and thus he bored them no animosity.             I know this behavior well. It’s called “prison institutionalization.” Bain became so absorbed in just surviving, just “doing his time” with the least resistance possible that he began to identify with the system that held him. I’ve seen too many long term inmates who find the right job in prison, such as tending flowers, and who create a “routine” of doing ...