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More Than an Ethical Lapse

By Michael Blankenship

The Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to address fundamental questions of ethics and fairness when it declined to review the case of Charles Dean Hood, an inmate on death row in Texas. The one-line order, issued without comment from any of the justices, left in place an egregiously tainted 1990 double-murder conviction. Eighteen years after Mr. Hood was sentenced to death, the state trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, and Tom O?Connell, then the Collin County district attorney, admitted that they had had a secret affair that appears to have ended not long before the trial. Read more... The fact that the judge and prosecutor were romantically involved should have resulted in the judge's removal from the trial process. At this point, a new trial is clearly warranted...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).