[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 10




TEXAS----impending execution

Mark Soliz is set to be executed for a 2010 North Texas slaying. He's said 
fetal alcohol disorder should exclude him from death.----Soliz and another man 
were convicted in the shooting death of a Johnson County woman during a robbery 
in her home. His lawyers pushed to stop his execution, saying fetal alcohol 
spectrum disorder should be treated like an intellectual disability.



On Tuesday, Texas is set to execute Mark Soliz for the 2010 home robbery and 
shooting death of a North Texas woman. If it proceeds, the execution will be 
the 6th in Texas this year and the 3rd in the last month. 9 more are scheduled 
through December.

Soliz, now 37, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012 for the murder of 
Nancy Weatherly, 61, and robbery of her Johnson County home, according to court 
records. Prosecutors said the murder was part of an eight-day crime spree 
during which Soliz and another man, Jose Ramos, robbed random people at 
gunpoint, and Soliz killed another man.

Soliz and his lawyers have long argued that his life should be spared because 
he has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which they claim is the “functional 
equivalent” of an intellectual disability, a condition the U.S. Supreme Court 
has ruled disqualifies individuals from execution. Both state and federal 
courts have rejected the claim during Soliz’s relatively short 7 years on death 
row.

After a federal appellate court denied his most recent appeal Monday, his 
lawyer said no other court proceedings had been filed to stop the execution. 
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could delay the execution for 30 days, though he has 
never done so.

In June 2010, prosecutors said, Soliz and Ramos terrorized residents in the 
Fort Worth area for 8 days before they were arrested on suspicion of one of 
several crimes, including multiple robberies, carjackings and shootings, 
another of which was fatal. When police interrogated Ramos about one stolen 
car, he began talking about another crime — in which he said the 2 men forced 
their way into Weatherly’s house in Godley at gunpoint, and Soliz shot her in 
the back of the head as they robbed her home.

Soliz initially denied killing Weatherly, telling police he was outside by the 
car when he heard a gunshot and then saw Ramos exit the house. Later during the 
interrogation, he said he would confess “just to get this over with,” according 
to a 2014 ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. A friend of Soliz’s 
later said he bragged to her about killing an “old lady.” Ramos received life 
in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder.

At his trial and in his appeals to state and federal courts, Soliz has 
repeatedly raised the claim that he should not be executed because of his 
disorder. Several defense experts testified before the jury that he was 
diagnosed with partial fetal alcohol syndrome, which his lawyers claim caused 
mental impairments like lack of impulse control, serious adaptive learning 
deficits and hyper-suggestibility. But the testimony did not keep the jury from 
handing down a death sentence, and appellate courts have not interfered, 
partially because the claim was raised at trial and failed.

But Soliz has argued his execution will go against his constitutional rights 
and recently noted changes in what is clinically considered an intellectual 
disability. Legal precedent prohibits states from executing people with 
intellectual disabilities, but Soliz has sought to expand that, saying there 
are so many similarities between intellectual disability and fetal alcohol 
spectrum disorder that the conditions should be treated the same way in capital 
cases.

“There are striking parallels between the diagnostic criteria for intellectual 
disability and FASD,” Soliz’s lawyers wrote in a court filing last month. 
“Those afflicted with FASD should be categorically ineligible for the death 
penalty just as the intellectually disabled are, and Soliz’s death sentence 
violates his Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.”

The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which won the backing of the courts, 
countered that Soliz’s request to change legal precedent is “overbroad.”

“The Supreme Court has not held that individuals with FASD are exempt from 
capital punishment. Consequently, Soliz seeks to create — not rely on — a new 
rule of constitutional law,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Jefferson 
Clendenin last week in response to Soliz’s last appeals.

Clendenin also argued that Soliz was the leader in the crimes and was 
“sophisticated, calculated and dangerous.”

Soliz’s execution would be the 3rd carried out by Johnson County, which sits 
just south of Fort Worth, since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in 
the 1970s. The last one was in 2004.

Texas’ 5 other executions so far this year make up more than 1/3 of the 14 that 
have taken place in the country. Of the 17 executions still scheduled in the 
country through December — including 3 federal cases — 9 are set to take place 
in the Texas death chamber in Huntsville, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center. Last year, Texas executed 13 men.

(source: The Texas Tribune)

*************************

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----45

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----563

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

46---------Sept. 10---------------Mark Anthony Soliz------564

47---------Sept. 25---------------Robert Sparks-----------565

48---------Oct. 2-----------------Stephen Barbee----------566

49---------Oct. 10----------------Randy Halprin-----------567

50---------Oct. 16----------------Randall Mays------------568

51---------Oct. 30----------------Ruben Gutierrez---------569

52---------Nov. 6-----------------Justen Hall-------------570

53---------Nov. 13----------------Patrick Murphy----------571

54---------Nov. 20----------------Rodney Reed-------------572

55---------Dec. 11----------------Travis Runnels----------573

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)

*************************

USA----impending/scheduled executions



With the execution of Billy Crutsinger in Texas on September 4, the USA has now 
executed 1,504 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized 
on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.

Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below 
is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful 
practice of state-sponsored killings.

NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution 
dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.

1505-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas

1506-------Sept 25------------Robert Sparks------------Texas

1507-------Oct. 1-------------Russell Bucklew----------Missouri

1508-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas

1509-------Oct. 10------------Randy Halprin------------Texas

1510-------Oct. 16------------Randall Mays-------------Texas

1511-------Oct. 30------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas

1512-------Nov. 3-9-----------Charles Rhines-----------South Dakota

1513-------Nov. 6-------------Justen Hall--------------Texas

1514-------Nov. 13------------Patrick Murphy-----------Texas

1515-------Nov. 20------------Rodney Reed--------------Texas

1516-------Dec. 5-------------Lee Hall Jr.-------------Tennessee

1517-------Dec. 9-------------Daniel Lewis Lee---------Federal - Ark.

1518-------Dec. 11------------James Hanna--------------Ohio

1519-------Dec. 11------------Travis Runnels-----------Texas

1520-------Dec. 11------------Lezmond Mitchell---------Federal - Ariz.

1521-------Dec. 13------------Wesley Purkey------------Federal - Mo.

1522-------Jan. 13-----------Alfred Bourgeois----------Federal - Tex.

1523-------Jan. 15-----------Dusten Honken-------------Federal - Iowa

1524-------Jan. 16-----------Kareem Jackson------------Ohio

(source: Rick Halperin)

****************************

Coalition of Jewish Organizations Seeks New Trial for Jewish Death-Row Prisoner 
in Texas Tried by Anti-Semitic Judge



A coalition of national and local Jewish organizations and lawyers have asked 
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop the scheduled October 10, 2019 
execution of a Jewish death-row prisoner to review his claim that the judge 
before whom he was tried was racist and anti-Semitic. Randy Halprin (pictured) 
was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial presided over by Dallas County 
Judge Vickers Cunningham, who referred to Halprin as a “f***ing Jew” and a 
“G*dd**n k**e” and called Halprin’s Latino co-defendants “wetb***s.” On 
September 5, 2019, the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism, 
the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Men of Reform Judaism, and more 
than 100 Jewish members of the State Bar of Texas filed an amicus brief with 
the state court in support of Halprin’s request for a stay of execution and a 
new trial free of bias.

Halprin was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer who responded 
to a robbery committed by a group of inmates, later dubbed the“Texas 7,” who 
had escaped from a Texas prison in 2000. Halprin has long maintained that he 
was not involved in the shooting, but was convicted under Texas’ law of 
parties, which permits the death penalty based upon the actions of other 
participants in a felony, even if the defendant himself did not commit the 
killing or intend that a murder take place.

Halprin’s lawyers first learned of Judge Cunningham’s possible racial and 
religious bias as a result of news reports by the Dallas Morning News in 2018 
that revealed that Cunningham had established a financial trust that rewarded 
his children if they married a white Christian of the opposite sex. Subsequent 
investigation by Halprin’s defense lawyers discovered that Cunningham had made 
bigoted comments about Jews in general and about Halprin personally. Halprin 
filed an appeal in May detailing Judge Cunningham’s bigoted speech and actions 
and arguing that Cunningham’s bias violated Halprin’s constitutional right to 
due process. In the stay application, they wrote, “Because the Supreme Court 
has held that a biased judge is structural error, …the evidence of bias, in and 
of itself, is more than sufficient to invalidate the conviction and sentence…. 
A biased judge constitutes a basic defect in the ‘whole adjudicatory framework’ 
of the trial.”

The amicus brief supports the stay and seeks further judicial review of the 
issue for Halprin. “If Judge Cunningham is the bigot described in the 
application, a fair trial has not yet happened,” the brief states. “Well into 
the twenty-first century, it is beyond dispute that a trial conducted before a 
racist judge who boasts of his bigotry is no trial at all. If the allegations 
here are true—and they unfortunately ring true—the trial was no trial, and the 
verdict no verdict, because the judge was no judge.”

The brief addresses the numerous ways in which Cunningham’s bias could have 
altered Halprin’s trial: “Even if Judge Cunningham were unaware of how his bias 
affected him, his prejudices—thinking of a Jewish defendant as a ‘k**e’ and his 
Latino co-defendants as ‘wetb***s’—rendered him unable to be neutral on 
pretrial motions, challenges to jurors, objections to evidence, proposed jury 
instructions, and his interactions with the lawyers, defendant, and jurors, 
regardless of whether they may appear facially neutral in the record.”

2 letters of support were also delivered to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton 
and Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot, one from a group of interfaith 
leaders and another from a group of rabbis. The interfaith letter says, “As a 
diverse group of faith leaders, we stand united against any expression of 
hatred…. We are called to speak out against this bias and demand that our state 
leaders actively address anti-Semitism when it infects any public office or 
proceeding. In Mr. Halprin’s case, it is unacceptable that his legal 
proceedings were led by an official who appears to have harbored anti-Semitic 
beliefs.” The faith leaders continue, “There is no room for the possibility 
that the race, ethnicity, gender, or religious beliefs of the accused play a 
role in the proceedings. Any erosion of this basic right to be judged fairly 
and neutrally threatens the freedom and safety of all citizens.”

The rabbis’ letter describes Cunningham’s anti-Semitic actions, saying, 
“Drawing on enduring hateful and hurtful stereotypes about the Jewish people, 
Judge Cunningham attended a costume party dressed as a ‘Jew banker,’ and was 
quoted as having said that Jews ‘needed to be shut down because they controlled 
all the money and all the power.’” It cites biblical commands regarding the 
impartiality of judges, then goes on to link them to the ongoing importance of 
judicial fairness: “Judaism’s commitment to pursuing justice calls us to insist 
no judge can perform his or her tasks with integrity while holding religious or 
ethnic bias, discrimination or bigotry. Justice is only possible when we look 
at the actions of a person accused of crime, not who they are, where they come 
from, the color of their skin, or where they worship, if they do. And the 
possibility of justice is only possible if impartial courts hear out claims of 
judicial bias.” In June, the Anti-Defamation League filed a brief in support of 
Halprin, explaining the bigoted nature of Cunningham’s actions. It wrote that 
Cunningham’s “use of the term ‘Jew’ as a pejorative, and his apparent belief in 
the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews control money and power make it 
impossible to avoid the conclusion that he is an anti-Semite.”

In June, Halprin commented on the newly-discovered information, saying, “I’m 
still in shock and reflecting on the news that I had a judge who hated Jews. 
It’s just a weird thing to have someone hate you for a religious view or how 
you were raised, or whatever. I can only hope the court is fair and pays 
attention to this.”

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

********************************

Fresh statement from witness delays start of capital murder trial in death of 
Little Elm pregnant woman



A witness in the capital murder trial of Daniel Greco sits outside the 431st 
District Court Monday morning. He gave fresh testimony Monday morning that 
delayed the start of the trial.

The capital murder jury trial for Daniel Greco stalled just as soon as it began 
Monday morning, when a prosecutor going over questions with witnesses outside 
the courtroom stumbled upon new information minutes before the start of the 
trial.

A man scheduled to give testimony in the case told the Denton County District 
Attorney’s Office that he spoke to a neighbor of Greco’s who had knowledge 
about a “tool” that allegedly was used to kill Anjanette Harris and her unborn 
child in March of 2016.

Investigators in 2016 found Harris’ body in a wooded area in Little Elm 
strangled and with stab wounds around her neck. In her purse was a sonogram; 
she was pregnant. Greco is accused of killing them both.

For the 1st time since 2011, the district attorney’s office is seeking the 
death penalty if Greco is convicted of capital murder. Monday morning, Judge 
Jonathan Bailey temporarily dismissed the jurors just as soon as they were 
seated inside the 431st District Court so the DA’s office could find the 
neighbor the witness told the prosecutor about and bring the man in for 
questioning.

Around noon Monday, the court was called back without the jury. The district 
attorney’s office by then had located the neighbor, who described himself as a 
good friend and former co-worker of Greco’s. Greco and the neighbor worked at 
the same cabinet shop for about 6 months.

Greco wore a navy-blue suit and a necktie Monday morning while in front of the 
jury. He returned to the fourth-floor courtroom wearing a standard orange 
jumpsuit from the Denton County Jail and in chains.

After a whirlwind morning that sent the prosecution scrambling to find the man, 
and the defense team for answers, Greco looked on as his friend and former 
neighbor denied ever hearing anything about what the witness told the 
prosecutor.

The witness had said the neighbor told him sometime after the 2016 death that 
Harris was stabbed with a “a tool” and that the neighbor in question threw away 
the tool. The neighbor, however, said he did not know anything about that and 
said rumors about how Harris died had been floating around his neighborhood 
since her death 3½ years ago.

“This is news to me,” the neighbor said about the witness’s claim. He said he 
talked with the witness one time about Harris’ death, and that was more than a 
year after her death, the neighbor said in court.

Asked if he came into possession of said tool or disposed of it, the neighbor 
said, “Absolutely not.”

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Harris died by 
strangulation and received stab wounds to her neck secondarily.

The neighbor said he saw Greco the morning of March 6 getting out of his truck 
and walking toward Greco’s home. The men waved at each other. Nothing more, the 
neighbor said.

The witness who gave the prosecutors the new information met twice with the 
district attorney’s office in 2018 but never before mentioned what he shared 
with them Monday morning.

“It didn’t occur to me how important that might be until later,” the witness 
said in court Monday morning.

His revelation did not bear much fruit for prosecutors Monday morning. The 
state’s prosecutors told the judge they did not intend on calling the neighbor 
to take the stand before the jury. Greco’s defense team, however, said they 
might call the neighbor back to testify.

The trial is scheduled to start again at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the 431st District 
Court. Judge Bailey told all attorneys involved to be in court at 8:30 a.m. to 
go over any new developments before the jury comes to court.

Greco’s lead defense attorney said over the weekend he expects the trial to 
last at least two weeks. Bailey indicated in court Monday the trial could last 
as long as a month.

(source: Denton Record-Chronicle)

********************

The Texas Death Penalty Machine Has Become Increasingly Grotesque----There’s 
something dishonest in the state’s bureaucratic approach to killing its own 
citizens.

Governor Greg Abbott tweeted last week that “expedited executions” for mass 
shooters would make a “nice addition” to the package of policy proposals he was 
assembling in the wake of massacres in El Paso and Midland-Odessa. It was a 
curious proposal, as my colleague Dan Solomon noted, given that 2 of the 4 most 
prolific recent shooters were killed in their attacks, the 3rd is too young to 
be executed, and the fourth had previously expressed a desire to die as soon as 
possible. But it was also a reminder that the death penalty retains a strong 
psychic hold on ideas about justice and public safety, even as capital 
punishment has evolved to become more and more, at least in the United States, 
a singularly Texan institution.

The use of the death penalty has slowed precipitously across the U.S. Only 13 
states have executed anyone since 2013. Last year, just 8 states had an 
execution, and Texas was responsible for more than 1/2 of the total number 
nationwide. Though the pace has slowed even here, Texas’ death penalty machine 
is still chugging along. The state’s next execution is scheduled for September 
10, followed by 1 on September 25. 4 more are scheduled for October, followed 
by another 4 through the end of the year. There are 218 people on death row.

Abbott’s statement implied that execution is a just reward for a mass murderer, 
but also that it would deter others from similar atrocities. That’s been the 
historic intention behind the death penalty—showy warnings, in the form of 
crucifixions, drawing-and-quarterings, burnings at the stake, hangings in the 
town square. But that’s not the case in Texas anymore. In some ways the death 
penalty in Texas has never been more grotesque—more bureaucratic, more 
antiseptic.

Last month, the state of Texas executed Larry Swearingen, a 48-year-old man 
from Montgomery County. In 1998, Swearingen raped and murdered 
nineteen-year-old Melissa Trotter, then a friend and college classmate. Or 
maybe he didn’t. No biological evidence ever tied Swearingen to the killing, 
and there’s plenty of reason for doubt if you’re looking for it, as laid out in 
this Washington Post summary of his defense team’s counterclaims.

Perhaps most significantly, a succession of forensic pathologists and others 
testified that Trotter seemed to have been killed after Swearingen had been 
arrested and was waiting in jail—which, as alibis go, is pretty good. 
Prosecutors, of course, think all that’s hogwash, and Trotter’s parents are 
convinced of Swearingen’s guilt too. They have their own set of compelling 
evidence and a record of things Swearingen did after he was arrested that imply 
guilt.

They may well be right, of course. We don’t know for sure, and we will likely 
never find out. We do know that a truly unimaginable thing happened to Trotter. 
“A bad man got what he deserved tonight,” said prosecutor Kelly Blackburn, 
claiming vengeance. “Larry Swearingen needs to be removed from the annals of 
history as far as I’m concerned.”

It’s a curious turn of phrase: removed from the annals of history, as if 
Blackburn were a censor in a bureaucrat’s office instead of a prosecutor. What 
Larry Swearingen leaves behind in the annals of history, as the excellent Keri 
Blakinger of the Houston Chronicle pointed out on Twitter, is paperwork:

I had never seen these forms before. They’re remarkable, above all else, for 
their banality. They’re what you get when you make killing boring, like 
combining murder with the DMV.

The first set of documents, the “Death Watch,” contains the careful notation of 
how citizen Swearingen spent his last 72 hours. After midnight, he stood at the 
door of his cell talking, then went to a desk to write. He packed up his 
belongings, to save someone the trouble, and presumably for the same reason, he 
cleaned his toilet too. (Blakinger’s podcast interview with Swearingen is worth 
a listen—among other things, he describes the way prisoners on death row make 
their own Magic: The Gathering cards, shouting plays at each other through the 
door.) On the last day, the notes stop abruptly. They’re no longer needed.

The second document is much stranger. The “Execution Recording” for prisoner 
No. 999361 picks up some time after the first document leaves off. It looks 
indistinguishable from every dumb government form you’ve ever filled out, from 
the Times New Roman type to the blanks made with the underline key to the 
office fax number at the bottom. On here, state employees record that 
Swearingen was “STRAPPED TO GURNEY” at 6:23. At 6:35, the “LETHAL DOSE BEGAN,” 
and seven minutes later, a time was registered for “PROCESS COMPLETED.”

The comments section is blank. Apparently nothing about the day’s events seemed 
worth mentioning. Swearingen kept his own record. “I can hear it going through 
the vein—I can taste it,” he said. There was a burning sensation in his right 
arm, something others executed have mentioned as well. Eventually, he started 
snoring.

I’d much rather be shot. Wouldn’t you? Death by firing squad seems more honest 
and might even involve less pain than this bizarre pseudo-medical ritual. But 
because the Supreme Court held that the Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel 
and unusual punishment” implies a directive to minimize “unnecessary pain,” 
states settled on a lethal injection process that puts prisoners to sleep 
before stopping their hearts. Pharmaceutical companies won’t sell the necessary 
drugs to Texas, however, so the state uses home-brew, locally-procured 
substitutes. And it all happens in private, so that the public can be spared 
the indignity of watching.

Part of the desire to make it a rigid, clinical process, of course, is that 
state employees must be involved in the government’s state-sanctioned killing—a 
cruel thing, even if they volunteer for it. The result is something strange and 
alienating. In the replies to one of Blakinger’s tweets, a former Houston 
Chronicle reporter commented that “Texas excels at making executions workaday 
affairs. I covered one for the Houston Chron many moons ago. When it was over, 
a guard said, ‘That was a quick one,’” she wrote. “And then we went to the 
communications [director]’s office to write our stories while he watched Wheel 
of Fortune.”

Even the little traditions that used to connect the old death penalty to the 
new one are being rolled back. In 2011, Texas ended the practice of serving 
convicts a last meal of their choosing before their execution, after one person 
ordered a large meal he didn’t eat—a trivial expense. And there was pressure 
during the most recent legislative session to end the practice of reading 
convicts’ last remarks to the media. (Both originated with pressure from state 
senator John Whitmire, a Democrat.)

Conservatives tend to support capital punishment more than liberals, even 
though government is never bigger than when it’s flushing poison through 
someone’s veins. If the state can’t be entrusted with tax dollars, how can it 
be trusted with the ability to decide which of its citizens deserve to die? 
When France abolished the death penalty in 1981, it did so because, as Francois 
Mitterand’s justice minister argued, executions create a totalitarian 
relationship between the state and the individual. “The true political 
signification of capital punishment is that it results from the idea that 
State” owns its people, he said.

Free countries tend not to employ the death penalty—unfree countries do. Today, 
the world leader in executions is China. Human rights organizations believes 
that the Chinese state kills thousands each year, some of them in mobile 
“execution vans.” The Chinese executioners in the vans use the American 
three-step lethal-injection process, first demonstrated in 1982, in Texas.

After Swearingen died, a prison official closed out the process at a press 
conference. The event of the day “was the 12th execution in the United States 
this year, the 4th in Texas, and there are eleven additional executions 
scheduled between now and the end of this calendar year,” he said. “Any 
questions?”

(source: Texas Monthly)