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SAN ANTONIO — A Texas appeals court docket ordered a brand new trial Wednesday for a Jewish man on demise row — who was a part of a gang of prisoners that fatally shot a police officer in 2000 after escaping — due to antisemitic bias by the choose who presided over his case.
Attorneys for Randy Halprin have contended that former Choose Vickers Cunningham in Dallas used racial slurs and antisemitic language to seek advice from him and a few of his co-defendants.
Halprin, 47, was among the many group of inmates generally known as the “Texas 7,” who escaped from a South Texas jail in December 2000 after which dedicated quite a few robberies, together with the one during which they shot 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins 11 occasions, killing him.
By a vote of 6-3, the Texas Courtroom of Felony Appeals ordered that Halprin’s conviction be overturned and that he be given a brand new trial after concluding that Cunningham was biased towards him on the time of his trial as a result of he’s Jewish.
The appeals court docket discovered proof confirmed that in his life, Cunningham repeated unsupported antisemitic narratives. When Cunningham grew to become a choose, he continued to make use of derogatory language about Jewish individuals exterior the courtroom “with ‘great hatred, (and) disgust’ and increasing intensity as the years passed,” the court docket mentioned.
It additionally mentioned that in Halprin’s trial, Cunningham made offensive antisemitic remarks exterior the courtroom about Halprin particularly and Jews on the whole.
“The uncontradicted evidence supports a finding that Cunningham formed an opinion about Halprin that derived from an extrajudicial factor — Cunningham’s poisonous antisemitism,” the appeals court docket wrote in its ruling.
The court docket beforehand halted Halprin’s execution in 2019.
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“Today, the Court of Criminal Appeals took a step towards broader trust in the criminal law by throwing out a hopelessly tainted death judgment handed down by a bigoted and biased judge,” Tivon Schardl, one in all Halprin’s attorneys, mentioned in a press release. “It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts.”
The order for a brand new trial got here after state District Choose Lela Mays in Dallas mentioned in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham didn’t or couldn’t curb the affect of his antisemitic bias in his judicial decision-making in the course of the trial.
Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs to seek advice from Halprin and the opposite escaped inmates.
Cunningham stepped down from the bench in 2005 and is now an lawyer in personal apply in Dallas. His workplace mentioned Wednesday that he wouldn’t be commenting on Halprin’s case.
Cunningham beforehand denied allegations of bigotry after telling the Dallas Morning Information in 2018 that he has a dwelling belief that rewards his kids for marrying straight, white Christians. He had opposed interracial marriages however later advised the newspaper that his views advanced.
The Tarrant County District Lawyer’s Workplace was appointed to deal with authorized points associated to Halprin’s allegations after the Dallas County District Lawyer’s Workplace, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.
In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court docket paperwork during which they mentioned Halprin ought to get a brand new trial as a result of Cunningham confirmed “actual bias” towards him.
Of the seven inmates who escaped, one killed himself earlier than the group was arrested. 4 have been executed. One other, Patrick Murphy, awaits execution.
