Haynes

TEXAS – EXECUTION TODAY- ANTHONY HAYNES – 6 p.m STAYED

October 18, 2012 

Anthony Haynes, 33, would be the 11th inmate executed this year in Texas and the 33rd in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The execution is scheduled for after 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) in Huntsville.

Haynes fired a shot from his truck at a Jeep Cherokee carrying off-duty Houston police officer Kent Kincaid and his wife, Nancy, according to an account of the case from the Texas attorney general’s office.

The officer got out of his Jeep and approached Haynes‘ truck, telling him that he was a police officer and asking to see his driver’s license, the account said.

Nancy Kincaid said during Haynes’ trial that her husband was reaching for his badge when the driver shot him in the head, according to a Houston Chronicle account at the time.

“(The driver) pulled his hand up and I saw the flash and I heard the pop,” Nancy Kincaid testified. “That was the end. He then went down.”

Kent Kincaid was declared brain-dead at the hospital.

That same night, Haynes had committed several armed robberies, Texas officials say.

“I’m not a vicious psychopath who goes around wanting to take people’s lives,” Haynes told the Houston Chronicle in a 2001 death row interview. “There was no intent to kill a cop. He did not ID himself until a second before I shot him.”

Haynes has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, raising questions about whether his trial lawyers were effective.

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These two men were both 19 when they were sentenced to death

Anthony Cardell Haynes

Anthony Haynes claimed he didn’t know that Kent Kincaid was a Houston police sergeant when he shot him in the head back in 1998. Kincaid was off-duty and driving his personal vehicle when Haynes drove by; something cracked Kincaid’s windshield, and he reportedly thought Haynes had thrown something at him. He followed Haynes, and when the 19-year-old stopped his car, Kincaid approached him. Kincaid said he was a police officer, but Haynes later said he didn’t know whether to believe him. When Kincaid reached behind his back, presumably for a badge, Haynes pulled out a .25-caliber gun and shot him.

Anthony Haynes

Anthony Haynes

Haynes blamed the tragedy in part on drugs and falling in with a bad crowd of people who reportedly made a game out of shooting at the windshields of passing cars and then robbing the drivers after they stopped. As it happened, the crack in Kincaid’s windshield was made by a bullet. Jurors in Haynes’ case deliberated for three days before sentencing the teen to death.

That sentence was overturned, however, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Haynes’ defense that an unusual jury-selection setup in Haynes’ case had denied his right to equal protection under law. Indeed, two different judges presided over Haynes’ jury selection; one heard prosecutors interview individual jurors, and a second heard the lawyers’ arguments for striking from service the potential jurors. As it turned out, the state used its power to strike all but one of the black potential jurors, arguing that it was not their race that excluded them (which would be illegal), but their “demeanor.” But Haynes’ appeal attorney argued that the judge who allowed those strikes had not actually witnessed the jurors’ questioning and thus could not actually have seen whether their demeanor would be a basis on which to have them struck. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately disagreed with the 5th Circuit, ruling that there was no rule that would require a judge to “personally observe” the juror questioning when deciding whether a juror is lawfully struck from service.

Haynes is scheduled for execution today, Oct. 18. STAYED

Bobby Lee Hines

Hines

Hines

Bobby Lee Hines was also just 19 when he was sentenced to death for the robbery and strangling of 26-year-old Michelle Haupt in her Dallas apartment. Now, 20 years later, he’s scheduled to die for that crime on Oct. 24. But his attorney, Lydia Brandt, argues that Hines’ execution should, once again, be stayed while the courts consider whether his lawyers have done enough to save his life.

Hines was convicted of the 1991 murder of Haupt, who was stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick and strangled with a cord inside her apartment. Hines had been staying next door with the apartment complex’s maintenance man. Police found items from Haupt’s apartment, including packs of cigarettes and a bowl of pennies, under a couch where Hines had been sleeping.

Hines’ first date with death was stayed in 2003, while the courts considered a claim that he was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for execution. Although Hines had a diagnosed learning disability and was considered emotionally disturbed, the courts ruled that he didn’t meet the criteria for relief. His execution date was reset for June 2012, but was stayed again so that further DNA testing could be performed. The DNA evidence confirmed Hines’ guilt and once again his execution was back on.

Now, Brandt is again seeking a stay, arguing that Hines’ case has been plagued by ineffective assistance of counsel. Brandt’s latest appeal, filed Oct. 10 with the Court of Criminal Appeals, argues that none of Hines’ defense attorneys ever investigated his background for mitigating evidence that could have swayed a jury to sentence him to life in prison. Hines had a “nightmarish” childhood that featured chronic abuse by his racist, alcoholic father, and later by foster parents, and was profoundly affected by his mother’s decision to abandon him as a young child. But the jury never heard anything of Hines’ troubled background. The question now before the CCA is whether the prior counsel’s failings can create an avenue for reconsidering Hines’ punishment. Brandt believes it should: “Fundamental rules of equity will not suffer a right to be without a remedy,” reads the appeal

TEXAS – Convicted Cop Killer in Texas Exhausts Appeals – Anthony Cardell Haynes STAYED

October 5, 2012 http://www.courthousenews.com

Houston, Texas (CN) – A convicted cop killer who faces the death penalty for the 1998 murder of an off-duty police officer cannot have his appeal reopened and his Oct. 18 execution will move forward, a federal judge ruled. Anthony Cardell Haynes shot and killed Sgt. Kent Kinkaid following a night of crime where he committed a string of armed robberies before spotting the off-duty officer and firing at him.
A Harris county jury convicted Haynes in 1999 of capital murder and sentenced him to death. After failing to find relief in both state and federal courts for more than a decade, including a 456-page federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed in 2005, Haynes petitioned the court to reopen his federal habeas action citing an ineffective trial counsel. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake rejected that petition Wednesday and denied him a certificate of appealability.
Haynes claimed relief under the recent Supreme Court decision Martinez v. Ryan, which concluded that a deficient performance by a state habeas attorney may amount to some cause, but Lake said that decision does not apply to cases arising from Texas courts.
Lake also said even if it did apply, Haynes failed to show extraordinary circumstances under the law.
“Because the Martinez decision is simply a change in decisional law and is not the kind of extraordinary circumstance that warrants relief under Rule 60 (b) (6), Haynes‘ motion is without merit. Additional, the applicability of Martinez to Texas’s post-conviction process does not change the fact that the court has already adjudicated Haynes‘ Strickland claim. Haynes asks the court ‘to exercise its authority and grant him relief from its prior judgment…and grant federal review of this claim …'”
“The court has already reviewed the merits of Haynes‘ Strickland claim in the alternative and found it to be without merit.”
Lake also noted that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals observed, on direct appeal, that Haynes confessed “to knowingly murdering a police officer after a violent crime spree.”
“Haynes admitted that he shot Sergeant Kincaid because he was a police officer and, showing no remorse, bragged to friends that he had killed a police officer. Haynes also told people that he should have killed Nancy Kincaid, so that there would have been no witness to the murder.”
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Haynes will be the 10th death row inmate to be executed this year, in the country’s most active death penalty state.