Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

• HOUSTON, June 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Wright Close & Barger LLP is pleased to announce it is growing the firm with the addition of five attorneys.
• Prior to joining Wright Close & Barger, Kelley was an associate at Grey Reed & McGraw and at Bracewell.
• "We are pleased to welcome our new partners Heidi and Kelley to the firm," said Tom Wright , co-founder of Wright Close & Barger.
• Wright Close & Barger, LLP is a Houston-based civil trial and appellate firm handling complex trial and appellate work for clients across Texas.

• When the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board decided not to recommend clemency for death row inmate Richard Glossip, the case highlighted the role clemency plays in the death penalty system.
• Glossip had asked the board to commute the sentence he had been given for his role in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.
• He was convicted of paying his co-defendant, Justin Sneed, to kill Barry Van Treese in 1997.
• The board, which met April 26, 2023, was split 2-2 over recommending that Glossip’s sentence be changed to life in prison.

The role of the attorney general

• In Oklahoma, family members of the victim are also given time to make their views known.
• In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its approval to that kind of procedure when it held that clemency hearings must afford due process to the participants.
• “I’m not aware of any time in our history that an attorney general has appeared before this board and argued for clemency.

Clemency as grace – or justice

• In United States v. Wilson, a decision from 1833 and the first case about clemency to be decided by the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall made that distinction clear.
• Instead of equating clemency and justice, he called clemency an “act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws.” Clemency, Marshall continued, “exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.
• It is … delivered to the individual for whose benefit it is intended, and not communicated officially to the court.” A little more than 20 years after Marshall wrote that, another Supreme Court justice, James Wayne, reinforced this separation of clemency and justice.
• Clemency hearings are now generally just another arena to which inmates like Richard Glossip can appeal for justice.

Clemency is rare in capital cases

• But, from the perspective of clemency’s recent record in capital cases, the result should not have been surprising.
• As my research has shown, a century ago clemency was granted in about 25% of capital cases.
• In the same period, more than 1,500 cases have proceeded to execution.” While the center does not indicate how often clemency was sought in those cases, requesting clemency is often a standard part of the efforts death penalty defense lawyers make to try to save their clients.
• It is hard to get clemency in capital cases because, as the center explains, “Governors are subject to political influence, and even granting a single clemency can result in harsh attacks.” As a result, “clemencies in death penalty cases have been unpredictable and immune from review.” And what is true nationwide is also true in Oklahoma where during the past half-century there have been only five grants of clemency in capital cases.

• Roy was sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder and engaging in organized crime.
• In 1995, he accompanied two other men, Edric Davis and Benny Lemmons, to Echo Lake Park to buy marijuana.
• When two cars suddenly arrived on the scene, Lemmons allegedly opened fire, thinking that the trio was about to be robbed.
• While the Court of Criminal Appeals considers whether it will hear the appeal, Roy's attorneys were successful in securing bond for their client.

• DALLAS, Oct. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomed a Texas court's decision to recommend a new trial for Randy Halprin, a Jewish prisoner on death row who has long claimed that the judge presiding over his trial was inherently biased against Jews and other minorities.
• "The court reached the only possible result, that the original judge's long uncontested and undisguised bigotry made it essential that Randy Halprin be granted a new trial," said AJC Chief Legal Officer Marc Stern.
• "The district court's recommendation that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals order a new trial is a vindication of core American principles of impartiality in American jurisprudence."
• The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution in October 2019 and remanded the case to the district court in Dallas County.