Hank Skinner

TEXAS – Top Criminal Court to Hear Hank Skinner’s DNA Plea (at 9 a.m)

Update  may 2 2012  Source : http://www.texastribune.org

Sensitive to dozens of DNA exonerations in recent years, judges on the nine-member Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today grilled the Texas solicitor general about what harm could be done by granting death row inmate Hank Skinner‘s decade-old request for biological analysis of crime scene evidence.

“You really tought to be absolutely sure before you strap a person down and kill him,” Judge Michael Keasler said.

Oral arguments in the hearing wrapped up today. It could take weeks or months for the court to render a decision on whether to allow DNA testing in the case.

Skinner, now 50, was convicted in 1995 of the strangulation and beating death of his girlfriend Twila Busby and the stabbing deaths of her two adult sons on New Year’s Eve 1993 in Pampa. Skinner maintains he is innocent and was unconscious on the couch at the time of the killings, intoxicated from a mixture of vodka and codeine.

For more than a decade, Skinner has asked the courts to allow testing on crime scene evidence that was not analyzed at his original trial, including a rape kit, biological material from Busby’s fingernails, sweat and hair from a man’s jacket, a bloody towel and knives. His lawyer, Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic, told the court that if DNA testing on all the evidence points to an individual who is not Skinner, then it could create reasonable doubt about his client’s guilt.

“It changes the picture,” Owen said. “Having the DNA evidence makes the jurors look at other pieces of evidence differently, because I think jurors are inclined to accept DNA evidence as reliable.”

Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell told the court that there is such “overwhelming evidence” of Skinner’s “actual guilt” that DNA testing could not undermine the conviction. Mitchell argued that Skinner had his chance to test the evidence at his trial, but he chose not to. Skinner is now using the fight for DNA analysis as a frivolous attempt to delay his inevitable execution, Mitchell added. Allowing Skinner testing at this late point in the process, Mitchell said, would set a dangerously expensive precedent for guilty inmates. In future cases, he said, prosecutors would feel obligated to test every shred of evidence to prevent a guilty defendant from delaying his sentence by requesting additional DNA results.

“Prosecutors will have to test everything, no matter what the cost,” Mitchell told the court.

“Prosecutors should be testing everything anyway,” Keasler said.

The Court of Criminal Appeals has previously denied Skinner’s requests, citing restrictions in the state’s 2001 post-conviction DNA testing law that have since been repealed. Most recently, during the 2011 legislative session, lawmakers repealed part of the law that allowed DNA testing only in cases where analysis was not done during the original trial because the technology did not exist or for some other reason that was not the fault of the defendant.

The court of appeals stayed Skinner’s Nov. 9 execution date so they could determine how the change to the law should apply to his case.

The tough questions for the state today came as something of a surprise from the court, which typically favors prosecutors.

Mitchell told the court that legislators did not intend to allow defendants like Skinner to reject testing at their original trial but then use it later to delay their executions.

Read the full article : click here 

May 2, 2012 Source : http://www.texastribune.org

Death row inmate Hank Skinner’s decade-long fight for DNA testing, which he hopes will prove his innocence in a grisly West Texas triple murder, will take center stage this morning in the state’s highest criminal court.

Skinner, now 50, was convicted in 1995 of the strangulation and beating death of his girlfriend Twila Busby and the stabbing deaths of her two adult sons on New Year’s Eve 1993 in Pampa. Skinner maintains he is innocent and was unconscious on the couch at the time of the killings, intoxicated from a mixture of vodka and codeine.

A decision from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could take weeks or months.

For more than a decade, Skinner has asked the courts to allow testing on a slew of evidence that was not analyzed at his original trial: a rape kit, biological material from Busby’s fingernails, sweat from a man’s jacket, a bloody towel and knives from the crime scene.

Lawyers in the Texas attorney general’s office argue that Skinner is only trying to put off his inevitable execution and that the evidence of his guilt is so overwhelming that DNA testing is unwarranted. But Rob Owen, one of Skinner’s lawyers and the co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic, said he is hopeful the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will finally allow the testing.

“The facts of Mr. Skinner’s case bear some of the hallmarks of wrongful conviction cases from around the country,” Owen said. “For all these reasons, none of the state’s arguments diminish the urgent need for DNA testing in his case.”

The appeals court has denied Skinner’s previous requests for testing, citing restrictions in the 2001 post-conviction DNA testing law. Lawmakers over the last several years, though, have repealed the restrictions that the court cited. Most recently, during the 2011 legislative session, lawmakers repealed part of the law that allowed DNA testing only in cases where analysis was not done during the original trial because the technology did not exist or for some other reason that was not the fault of the defendant.

In Skinner’s case, his original trial lawyers chose not to request DNA testing on all of the evidence available because they worried that it would further implicate him. Lawmakers referred to his case when they repealed the provision last year, and the court of appeals stayed Skinner’s execution date in November so it could “take time to fully review the changes in the statute as they pertain to this case.”

Today, lawyers for Skinner, who is at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, will argue to the court that legal impediments to the testing that previously existed are gone. DNA testing, they say in court documents, could reveal not only that the death row inmate is innocent, but it could point to the real perpetrator.

“The State may well have the wrong man, and, in combination with exculpatory DNA results, evidence that would very likely leave a rational jury harboring reasonable doubt about his guilt,” Skinner’s lawyers wrote in a brief to the court.

The court must only decide whether the results of DNA testing, combined with other evidence, could cause a jury to have reasonable doubt about Skinner’s guilt, his lawyers argue.

Skinner’s lawyers theorize in court filings that it was Busby’s uncle, Robert Donnell, who killed her. Witnesses reported seeing Donnell, who has since died, harass Busby at a party the night before the killing. The two had previously had sexual encounters, he had a violent history and neighbors reported seeing him cleaning his truck with a hose and stripping the carpet from it days after the murders.

Skinner’s lawyers contend that toxicology reports show that Skinner would have been too inebriated at the time of the crimes to have been physically capable of strangling Busby to unconsciousness, stabbing her 14 times and then stabbing her two large sons to death.

Additionally, the one witness who said Skinner confessed to the murders — an ex-girlfriend of his — has since recanted her testimony, saying authorities coerced her.

But lawyers for the state argued in a court brief that “nothing that DNA testing might reveal would lead a jury to acquit Skinner of involvement in these murders.”

Skinner’s former girlfriend’s recantation, they charge, was untruthful. Skinner, an admitted alcoholic, they say, would have been more tolerant of the chemicals he had ingested.

State lawyers also submitted a statement that Skinner gave to the sheriff just hours after the murder in which he described a fight he had with Busby the night she was killed. “I can see me arguing with Twila. I can might even see maybe I might have killed her. But I can’t see killing them boys,” he said. (That statement was not admitted during trial because, Skinner’s lawyers wrote, it was taken while Skinner was deprived of sleep and still under the influence of painkillers he was given for an injury to his hand the night of the murders, and the prosecutor didn’t attempt to have it admitted because he said he “knew darn well it wasn’t admissible” because “it was so blatantly violative of the defendant’s rights.”)

The state also argues — despite the repeal of the provision prohibiting testing in cases where inmates chose not to have evidence analyzed previously — that the court should deny the testing because Skinner elected not to do it at his trial. Lawmakers, state lawyers said, did not intend to allow a defendant to “lie behind the log” during trial and then seek DNA tests later to prolong his life.

“Skinner’s transparently false claims of innocence do a grave disservice to the truly innocent prisoners who sit behind bars, who are less likely to be believed when inmates such as Skinner demand post-conviction DNA testing as a means of subverting capital punishment and delaying their eventual execution date,” state lawyers wrote in their March brief to the appeals court. “The State of Texas would never oppose the efforts of a wrongfully convicted inmate to clear his name and vindicate his innocence in court.”

Related articles

Texas appeals court stays pending execution to allow DNA testing (sentencing.typepad.com)

Oral Argument  may 2 2012,  9.a.m  pdf file 

AP-76,675 HENRY W. SKINNER GRAY
DNA
Robert C. Owen for the Appellant
Jonathan F. Mitchell for the State

TEXAS – Hank Skinner – one more innocent on the death row

Filmmaker Werner Herzog’s segment on Hank Skinner, who is on Texas death row and fighting to prove his innocence with more DNA testing.

official website : http://www.hankskinner.org/

Why is Alabama opposing DNA testing?

March 28, 2012  source :http://socialistworker.org

why is Alabama opposing DNA testing?

Rebekah Skelton reports on a case where an Alabama man’s life is at stake.

March 28, 2012

Alabama death row prisoner Thomas ArthurAlabama death row prisoner Thomas Arthur

THOMAS ARTHUR has been on Alabama’s death row for 30 years. He was convicted of killing Troy Wicker in 1982, but has always maintained his innocence. Recently, a federal appeals court stayed Arthur’s March 29 execution date over an issue about lethal injection, though that stay could be lifted at any time.

The real question, however, remains this: Will Thomas Arthur be executed in Alabama without being allowed to have DNA testing that could prove his innocence?

There is a piece of evidence, an “Afro wig” worn by Wicker’s killer as a disguise, that could be tested for Arthur’s DNA. The wig has already been tested once for DNA, after another Alabama prisoner, Bobby Ray Gilbert, confessed to Wicker’s murder in 2008. However, the testing was inconclusive–there wasn’t a match for Gilbert or Arthur.

Ultimately, the original judge decided that Gilbert’s confession wasn’t credible, and despite a lack of other physical evidence tying Arthur to the crime, she recommended that the Alabama Supreme Court deny Arthur’s appeal, which it did.

Now, Arthur’s defense team is asking for a more advanced DNA test, called a mini-STR DNA analysis, on the wig, but Alabama’s attorney general is fighting the request–arguing that this test wouldn’t be any more accurate than the previous one. On top of that, there is no law guaranteeing Arthur the right to further DNA testing.

“I am outraged that there is physical evidence that, if DNA-tested, would prove my father’s guilt or innocence conclusively. This testing could be done prior to his execution and would be paid for by the law firm handling his case,” said Arthur’s daughter Sherrie Stone. “If we are to continue executions in this country, laws must be put in place in which DNA testing must be allowed at all stages of the process. There is a chance we are executing innocent people. I know because my father is one of those people.”

If the lawyers have offered to pay for the testing, what could possibly be the problem? If the test shows that Arthur’s innocent, the state of Alabama can rest easy knowing they didn’t condemn an innocent man to death. And if it show’s he’s guilty, it would only affirm what the state has already convicted him of, at no cost to them.

However, as Andrew Cohen pointed out in a February article in The Atlantic, the general consensus among prosecutors and judges is to value “finality” in cases, rather than “accuracy.” Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, outlined this position in a 2000 “Frontline” interview, saying, “We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent. We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IT SHOULD be clear to anyone with a conscience that if there’s even a small chance that someone might be innocent after being convicted, the court should do everything in its power to ensure they have the right person–especially when someone’s life is at stake.

But lately, prosecutors have been fighting harder than ever to keep defendants from having access to post-conviction DNA testing. Hank Skinner has been on Texas death row since 1995. His case has many similarities to Arthur’s, such as DNA evidence the court is denying him the right to have tested and a heavy emphasis on an eyewitness who at one point or another recanted.

“Since these guys are on their electoral deadlines, their finality has nothing to do with accuracy,” said Skinner’s wife Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner. “You can’t rush justice.”

The goal of any justice system has to be to find the truth. As Sandrine said, since no justice system is ever going to be infallible–there have been 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the U.S., according to the Innocence Project–prosecutors and judges must be willing to admit that they might have convicted the wrong person.

Post-conviction DNA testing must be granted to prisoners whose guilt is questionable–o matter what the cost, and especially when it could be an innocent person who’s paying the ultimate price.

First published at The New Abolitionist.

The barbarity of life on America’s death row Werner Herzog and Hank Skinner

march 23, 2012 source : http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk

They have the death penalty in 34 American states – 16 of which currently perform executions with lethal injections. Until only recently, you could elect to die by firing squad in Utah.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog laid out his cards when he interviewed Hank Skinner, a man who has spent 17 years on death row in Texas.

“I’m not an advocate of the death penalty,” said Werner.

“Neither am I,” quipped Hank.

What emerged from this compelling documentary was a grim story of life on death row. The treatment of inmates seemed barbaric. Time doesn’t just drag here, it’s all over the place.

They don’t wash the windows of the cells so prisoners end up cocooned in a world of their own.

There’s activity and noise 24 hours a day. They serve breakfast at 3am, lunch at 10am and supper at 4pm.

The food is awful, says Hank, until you get to the execution unit, where you get a good last meal. He’s been so close to execution that he’s been given the last rites and had a final meal – fried chicken, catfish fillets, salad, a bacon cheeseburger, fries and chocolate milkshake.

It was delicious – because it’s prepared by the prisoners and they get to eat what the condemned man couldn’t face. Hank says, with a wry smile, that his last-minute reprieve gave him his appetite back and the prisoners had to go without their treat.

Hank says he’s innocent of the murder of his girlfriend and her two mentally disabled sons in 1995 – I guess a lot of death row men say they’re not guilty – but it seems unjust that he had to go to the Supreme Court to get the District Attorney to release DNA evidence which he says could prove his innocence.

On the face of it, he might have a point. There was another man’s jacket at the scene covered in the victim’s blood. His fingerprints were on a knife because he used it every day to make sandwiches.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, it throws the spotlight on the use of the death penalty. Being proved innocent after death makes no sense at all.