Legal News

No New Trial for Texas Man, Despite Judge/Prosecutor Affair

By Ashby Jones

Hmmm. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — the Lone Star State’s supreme court on criminal matters — has ruled that a man facing the death penalty for murder will not get a new trial despite the fact that the prosecutor on the case and the judge who tried the case were at the time involved in a romantic affair.

In a 6-to-3 decision, the court said the convicted man, Charles D. Hood (pictured), was barred from a new trial because he failed to raise the issue in earlier appeals. The decision overturned the findings of a district court judge who had found that Hood should be allowed a hearing on a new trial. Click here for the story from the Dallas Morning-News; here for the NYT’s story; here and here for previous LB coverage.

What makes the ruling perhaps a bit curious — a point made by the three dissenting judges — is that the affair was not confirmed until last September, long after Hood’s trial.

Defense attorney David Dow seized on that fact Wednesday, saying he was stunned by the ruling. When the Court denied a stay on the issue last year, said Dow, “it denied a stay because it said 'There’s no proof. Come back to us when you have some proof.’”

According to Dow, he landed the proof, in the form of sworn testimony from the judge and prosecutor. “And what do they say?” Dow asked. “'Tough, you lose anyway.”

The ruling came despite the fact that the lower court judge had recommended Hood be allowed to pursue the claim, going so far as to say the state’s “hands are unclean.”

John Rolater, assistant district attorney for Collin County called Wednesday’s ruling “a significant procedural victory.”

Hood is on death row for the 1989 robbery and murder of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace in Plano. His attorneys had tried to explore the issue of whether the relationship between judge and prosecutor had affected the trial for years but had little except rumors.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 17, 2009 (boomark / email).