What If a White Judge Cleaned Guns During Jury Selection of 95% white Jury for a Black Juvenile Charged with Murder of White Cop? [MORE] Since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row defendants (77%) have been executed for killing white victims, even though Blacks make up about half of all homicide victims. [MORE] From [HERE] Harris County cop killer Anthony Haynes moved a step closer to execution on Tuesday when the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected his request that it recommend his death sentence be commuted to life in prison. Haynes alternately had asked the board to recommend to Gov. Rick Perry that his execution be stayed for 90 days to allow for a review of his case. The board also rejected that request.
Haynes is to be put to death on Thursday for the fatal shooting of off-duty police officer Kent Kincaid – who was white – in Houston a year earlier. Claims of racial discrimination, inadequate legal representation and judicial and prosecutorial misconduct have marked the case. A federal appeals court late Monday refused to halt Haynes' execution, rejecting an appeal from his lawyers who argued that his original lawyers provided ineffective counsel. Haynes still can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
More than three dozen people have signed sworn statements filed in court since the trial saying that, if asked, they would have been willing to testify that the crime was shockingly out of character for a teenager they knew as non-violent and respectful.
The jury also never learned that he had taken crystal methamphetamine two days before the shooting, or what effect this had had on him. No expert testimony was presented on his history of mental health problems or on the mitigating effect of youth. The prosecutor was able to argue to the jury that “no mitigation” had been presented and that Haynes was “a dangerous predator that nothing can mitigate”.
Anthony Haynes is said to have been a model inmate and to have long expressed deep remorse for the death of Sergeant Kincaid.
In 2009, a federal appeals court ruled that Anthony Haynes should get a new trial on the claim of racial discrimination during jury selection. Only one of the 12 jurors at his original trial was African-American after the prosecutor had summarily dismissed four of six black prospective jurors.
But the Supreme Court overturned the appeal court’s ruling saying to let it stand would have “important implications”.
Judicial misconduct also tainted the proceedings – the judge who oversaw the jury selection process had been dismantling and cleaning two guns in full view of would-be jurors. He was later reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, but Anthony Haynes’ death sentence was allowed to stand.
“To obtain a death sentence for Anthony Haynes, the prosecution had to persuade the jury that he would be an ongoing threat to society, even in prison. The state’s case was weak – the defendant had no prior criminal record – but it was helped by the failure of the defence lawyers to present compelling mitigating evidence available to them,” said Rob Freer, USA researcher at Amnesty International.
A Coerced Confession?
For Texas to obtain the death penalty in this case, the prosecution also had to prove that Haynes knew Sergeant Kincaid was a police officer at the time of the shooting. Kincaid was off-duty the day of the shooting and was dressed in plain clothes, driving his personal car. In his initial statement, for which he waived his right to have a lawyer present, Haynes confessed to the shooting and to knowing that Kincaid was a police officer.
Haynes has since maintained that this confession was coerced, and that he did not know Kincaid was an officer. During and before his interrogation, Haynes was not allowed to use the bathroom, eat or rest, and was still feeling the effects of his meth use. As we have all seen recently, it doesn’t always take much to coerce a false confession. Despite Haynes’ allegation that the confession was coerced, the judge allowed it to be used as evidence that led to his being sentenced to death in 1999. [MORE]
“The culture of capital justice in Texas is such that executive clemency is a rarity there, but here is another case that should give even ardent death penalty supporters pause for thought about the killing the state does in their name.”
More than 100 of the inmates currently on death row in Texas were prosecuted in Harris County, the jurisdiction where Anthony Haynes was tried.
Of the 486 people put to death in Texas since the USA resumed executions in 1977, nearly a quarter – 116 – were convicted in Harris County. If it were a separate state, the county would have the second-highest execution total in the entire USA, second only to the rest of Texas. [MORE]