CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

By:  Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

Would you want a Judge presiding over a criminal case against you sleeping with the District Attorney prosecuting that case?

Didn’t think so. Most people wouldn’t. You expect a Judge to be neutral, free of the slightest appearance of impropriety. You expect a District Attorney to be zealous, honest, and even-handed in the prosecution of criminal cases. Those general expectations – what the State Bar calls the rules of ethical conduct – are compromised when a District Attorney prosecutes a case before a Judge with whom the District Attorney is having a sexual liaison.

That controversial issue has become a highly-publicized feature in the capital murder case of Charles Dean Hood. Attorneys working to save Hood from lethal injection charged, and ultimately proved, that 19 years ago when the condemned inmate was tried and convicted in a Collin County District Court, former District Attorney Tom O’Connell, who prosecuted Hood, was reportedly having a romantic affair the former trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, who presided over the trial.

Hood was scheduled for execution on September 10, 2008, but the day before the execution was to be carried out, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a reprieve in the case. The appeals court, on which Holland had previously served as a judge, ducked the sexual liaison issue involving Holland and O’Connell and instead issued the reprieve on what the court said were “developments in the law regarding (jury) nullification instructions.”

The appeals court had previously rejected this same jury instruction issue in Hood’s case but said it was now “prudent to reconsider the decision we [previously] issued.” (more…)

By Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

The State of Texas executed two foreign nationals during the week of August 5 and 7, 2008. Both men, Jose Ernesto Medellin and Heliberto Chi, were found guilty of committing brutal murders. There was little doubt about their guilt. Had they not been foreign nationals, their executions would have passed under the Texas execution radar basically unnoticed. This is a sad fact in this great state where executions have become all too common.

But they were foreign nationals and their executions had, and will continue to have, international legal and political implications. The controversy associated with these executions centers on this country’s refusal to honor - if not the intent, the spirit – of its international treaty obligations. The treaty obligation in Medellin’s case involved Vienna Convention which provides that when a person is arrested in a foreign country, the arresting officials have an obligation to inform that person of his/her right to consult with, and seek assistance from, the “consular” of their country. Medellin, a Mexican national, was not advised of his “consular rights” when arrested in Harris County in 1994.

Chi’s case, a Honduran national, involved a different treaty – a 1927 U.S. Bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Consular Rights with Honduras. Unlike the Vienna Convention, the Honduran Bilateral Treaty was “self-executing” – meaning the treaty did not require legislation by the United States Congress to have full force and effect. Last March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Medellin case that the Vienna Convention was not self-executing and, therefore, did not have automatic effect on federal law in this country because Congress had never passed legislation to give rights guaranteed under the treaty full legal force.

The Vienna Convention became a bone of international contention in 2004 when the International Court of Justice, located in the Hague, issued a decision that said the United States had violated the “consular rights” of 51 Mexican nationals convicted of capital crimes in this country and, therefore, they were entitled to a review of their convictions and death sentences. Although his case was not one of the 51 Mexican nationals involved in the ICJ decision, Medellin’s case became the one that ultimately worked its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and led to the precedent ruling that the Vienna Convention was not “self executing.” (more…)

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

On July 23, 2008 the State of Mississippi executed Dale Leo Bishop for his involvement in the beating death of 22-year-old Marcus James Gentry. The Bishop execution was significant only because he became the third person put to death in this country who did not actually kill the victim while the actual killer received life imprisonment.

In 1998 Bishop, Gentry, and Jessie Johnson engaged in a night of heavy drinking and drug use. They ended up in Gentry’s car on an isolated dirt road near Saltillo, a community in northern Mississippi. A dispute broke out among the men leading Johnson and Bishop to attack Gentry. Johnson struck Gentry 23 times with a hammer before it lodged in the victim’s throat. Bishop was convicted because he held Gentry by the neck during the murderous assault.

Johnson was tried separately from Bishop, convicted, and received a life sentence without parole. Bishop was also convicted by a jury, but elected to have the trial judge impose sentencing. Even though Johnson admitted that he struck the fatal blows that killed Gentry, the judge nonetheless sentenced Bishop to death.

The two others cases in which the actual killer received life while the lesser participant was put to death were Steven Hatch, who was put to death in Oklahoma in 1996, and Doyle Skillern, who was put to death in Texas in 1985. (more…)