The U.S. Supreme Court has again ruled against Texas’ top criminal court in a death penalty case, the latest in the high court’s repeated dismissals of Texas decisions against death row inmates.
June 15 (UPI) — The U. S. Supreme Court has again ruled against Texas’ top criminal court in a death penalty case, the latest in the high court’s repeated dismissals of Texas decisions against death row inmates.
In a 19-page opinion on a 6-3 ruling Monday, the justices sent Terence Andrus’ case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for further review. They said the court must again examine whether the « abundant » amount of mitigating evidence not presented at Andrus’ trial should warrant a new punishment trial to decide if he should get lethal injection or life in prison without parole. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Andrus was sentenced to death in 2012 for two 2008 shooting deaths in Fort Bend County during an unsuccessful carjacking attempt.Last year, the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the trial court’s recommendation on appeal that Andrus get a new punishment trial because his lawyer failed to raise potentially sentence-changing evidence.
The Supreme Court ruling focused on the evidence that could have been used to sway the jury from a death sentence. This includes his mother’s drug addiction and prostitution, his role as caretaker for his siblings when his mother would disappear, his own drug abuse, multiple suicide attempts and a diagnosis of psychosis.
« During Andrus’ capital trial, however, nearly none of this mitigating evidence reached the jury, » the justices wrote. « That is because Andrus’ defense counsel not only neglected to present it; he failed even to look for it. »
The justices ruled that the work by Andrus’ lawyer, former Fort Bend County prosecutor James « Sid » Crowley, fell below what is legally reasonable representation. They sent Andrus’ case back to the Court of Criminal Appeals to make a determination on whether, with better legal representation, there is a « reasonable probability » that Andrus’ jury would have instead delivered a life sentence.
