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Ethics

: Legal Ethics Forum

Important development from Texas trial court judge in Charles Hood death penalty case

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There's been an encouraging development about the death penalty imposed on Charles Hood by the state of Texas. (Nod to Clare Pastore, who teaches legal ethics at USC.)

You may recall that the original trial judge -- the one who imposed the jury's death penalty -- was later accused of having a romantic relationship with the prosecutor. The defense's post-verdict efforts were largely focused on that issue.

When the original judge and prosecutor were finally placed on oath, they admitted the relationship but testified that it had ended the year before the death penalty was fixed. Texas appellate courts sent the matter back down to a new trial level judge in Plano to find facts and decide whether the criminal defense counsel had waited too long to raise the issue. The news article suggests that the appellate court wanted a ruling from the newly assigned judge that defense counsel had waived the issue by waiting too long.

Indeed, the post-trial declarations by defense counsel revealed that they had heard rumors about the affair way back at the time of the trial, but didn't formally raise the issue until much later. Many observers (including myself) wondered why defense counsel hadn't done more to raise the issue at the time of the trial.

The Plano trial judge recently assigned to consider the issue has apparently ruled that the situation is not to be blamed on defense counsel but rather on the judge. Having read this article, the new ruling makes sense to me.

Can you imagine being tried under the death penalty when the judge and prosecutor had an intimate relationship, either ongoing or recently ended? Let's hope that the appellate courts in Texas do the right thing.

Full post as published by Legal Ethics Forum on May 08, 2009 (boomark / email).