The court on Thursday halted the execution for Duane Buck, 48, two hours into a six-hour window when he could have been taken to the death chamber. Texas officials, however, did not move forward with the punishment while legal issues were pending.
Buck was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of his ex-girlfriend and a man in her apartment in July 1995. His attorneys had asked both the Supreme Court and Texas Gov. Rick Perry to halt the execution because of a psychologist's testimony that black people were more likely to commit violence. Buck's guilt is not being questioned, but his lawyers contend the testimony unfairly influenced the jury and Buck should receive a new sentencing hearing.
The nation's highest court, without extensive comment, said it would review an appeal related to that testimony. The decision meant Perry did not have to act on a request from Buck's lawyers that the governor use his authority to issue a one-time 30-day reprieve.
Buck's case is one of six that then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn – a political ally of Perry who is now a Republican U.S. senator – reviewed in 2000 and said needed to be reopened because of racially charged statements made during the sentencing phase. In the other five cases, new punishment hearings were held and each convict again was sentenced to die.
State attorneys contend Buck's case was different from the others and that the racial reference was a small part of larger testimony about prison populations. Jurors in Texas must decide on the future danger of an offender when they are considering a death sentence.
Perry is a capital punishment supporter and as frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination his actions now are coming under closer scrutiny. During his 11 years in office, 235 convicted killers in Texas have been put to death. His office said he has chosen to halt just four executions, including one for a woman who later was executed.
Among the people with doubts about the delayed Texas death sentence that’s now become a campaign issue for Gov. Rick Perry: John Cornyn and Antonin Scalia.
In 2000, Cornyn — a Perry ally who’s now the state’s junior senator — was the Texas attorney general who said that several convicts’ death sentences had been unfairly influenced by a psychologist’s testimony that black convicts were by their race more likely to re-offend. Among those on Cornyn’s questionable list: Duane Buck, an African-American who was sent to death row in 1997
Buck’s attorneys unsuccessfully sought a reprieve from Perry on Wednesday, but because he was out of state while campaigning in Virginia, the decision fell to his lieutenant governor. But Justice Scalia, who oversees the 5th Circuit for the Supreme Court, which includes Texas, granted a stay in order to give time for the case to be reviewed.
Cornyn’s old doubts about the cases in which the psychologist had testified were a key element of the papers Buck’s lawyers filed with the Supreme Court.
“It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system,” Cornyn said in a 2000 press release. “The people of Texas want and deserve a system that affords the same fairness to everyone. I will continue to do everything I can to assure Texans of our commitment to an equitable criminal justice system.”
According to transcript excerpts of the sentencing hearing that appear in Buck’s appeal, psychiatrist Walter Quijano, answered “yes” when prosecutors asked him under cross-examination if “the race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?”
The other convicts in whose cases Quijano testified all received new sentencing hearings, and all were eventually again sentenced to death, but Buck was not allowed a new sentencing hearing because at the time of Cornyn’s statement, his case was in the local district court, where a district attorney, not the state attorney general, would have had jurisdiction.
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