I absolutely agree that capital murder cases should be handled with a great deal of rectitude, because the consequences are irreversible. You can’t release an unfairly accused prisoner after you’ve put him to death. Still..... 36 years on death row in Texas is a very long time, and at first glance it does not seem to be with good reason. There doesn’t seem to be any question about who murdered Officer Wayne Shirley (opportunity), how he murdered him (means), and why he murdered him (motive). There’s at least one withness to parts of those facts - if not more than one. There’s no question that the accused attempted to hide Shirley’s body to evade his own discovery and arrest. The accused’s guilt was proven beyond dispute, and he received due process. So how is it that he’s still alive 36 years after he hilled his victim? The thought makes me angry too, so I did a little research to try and understand how this could happen.Liberty wrote:If we had a great record in Texas of not convicting innocent people, quick executions would be a good idea. I think anyone caught falsifiying or hiding evidence should be subject to the same punishment as the accused Murder is murder, whether it's done by a lying LEO, a prosecuting DA, or an illegal alien.
Here’s how (I am not exonerating the accused here; just trying to explain what happened)......
In 2016, 34 years after the fact, a federal judge ruled that the accused’s fate be returned to the trial court for either a new penalty phase or retrial, based on two different SCOTUS decisions concerning the same murder trial in a different Texas murder case: Penry v Lynaugh (1989), and Penry v Johnson (2001). At issue was whether or not a jury must be allowed to hear mitigating evidence of an accused person’s mental retardation during the penalty phase of a trial, taking that condition into account in deciding the penalty. The Penry v Johnson wiki page says:
Soon after this decision, in 2002, SCOTUS ruled in a separate third case - Atkins v Virginia - that executing people with intellectual disabilities was a violation of the 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishments, but also determined that states may determine who is intellectually disabled. Under Atkins, Penry’s death sentence was converted to life imprisonment.In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Penry v. Lynaugh that Johnny Paul Penry had been sentenced to death in violation of the Eighth Amendment after finding that Texas' special instruction questions did not permit the jury to consider mitigating evidence involving his mental retardation.[2] On retrial in 1990, Penry was again found guilty of murder.[2] The defense again put on evidence regarding Penry's mental impairments. Ultimately, a psychiatric evaluation, which stated that Penry would be dangerous to others if released, prepared at the request of Penry's former counsel, was cited.[3] Upon submission to the jury, the trial judge instructed the jury to determine Penry's sentence by answering the same special questions in the first trial. Additionally, the trial judge gave a supplemental instruction on mitigating evidence. The court sentenced Penry to death in connection with the jury's answers to the special issues. In affirming the verdict, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Penry's claims that the admission of language from the psychiatric evaluation violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and that the jury instructions were constitutionally inadequate because they did not permit the jury to consider his specific mitigating evidence.[3] Penry's petitions for state and federal habeas corpus relief failed.[3]
In 2014, a fourth relevant SCOTUS case - Hall v Florida - ruled that:
The court narrowed the definition of intellectual disability by expanding the considerations used in the determination.....a bright-line IQ threshold requirement for determining whether someone has an intellectual disability (formerly mental retardation) is unconstitutional in deciding whether they are eligible for the death penalty.
How all of this relates to the murder of Officer Wayne Shirley is this...... The accused has been granted a stay under the Penry rulings requiring him to be retried or receive a new penalty phase hearing in which the jury will have to be informed of his intellectual status before they can rule on his fate. But it is easy to predict that, once that happens, his attorneys will invoke Hall v Florida to slant that determination in the accused’s favor as much as possible, and then invoke Atkins v Virginia to argue that capital punishment would violate his 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
The only way Officer Shirley’s killer is going to ride the needle is if his attorneys fail to demonstrate to the court that he is intellectually disabled enough to avoid the death penalty. Either way, his jury is going to be hearing that evidence as required by SCOTUS. I suspect that all along the way, his attorneys were successful in showing the concerned court that there were other related cases pending before SCOTUS that could very possibly have an effect on the outcome of this one, and that justice required a stay of execution until those cases had each been resolved. As we all know, it can take years for a single case to make it’s way to SCOTUS for disposition - if certiorari is granted. Then multiply that by four cases: Penry v Lynaugh, Penry v Johnson, Atkins v Virginia, and Hall v Florida......and that is how 36 years after Officer Shirley was murdered, in which none of the facts of the murder are in dispute, his killer is still alive.
I too am angered by this; but the flip side of this is the very fundamental question of whether or not we want the wheels of justice to turn too quickly.
I don’t have the answer to that. All I have is an explanation for why this murderer took so damned long to be punished.
(EDITED TO REMOVE A REDUNDANCY....)