As Texas Execution Nears, Hearing Is Set by Claim That Judge and Prosecutor Had Affai

[Woodmonkey]

HOUSTON — With less than a week to go before the scheduled execution of a man who contends his murder trial was tainted by a love affair between the judge and the prosecutor, a state judge on Thursday ordered a hearing into the accusation and the Texas attorney general called for a review of the fairness of the trial.

The judge’s order and the attorney general’s request are the latest twists in a complicated legal drama that has prompted criticism from prosecutors, judges and experts on legal ethics across the nation. They argue that if the love affair occurred, the condemned man did not receive a fair trial.

On Wednesday, 22 prominent former judges and prosecutors — among them the former F.B.I. director William S. Sessions — urged Gov. Rick Perry to put off the execution to allow more time for a hearing to determine if the claim of an affair is true.

“It is an irrevocable wrong to send a man to his death without ever hearing this critical evidence,” the group said in a letter to Governor Perry, a Republican.

Late on Thursday, the attorney general, Greg Abbott, said he agreed. In a letter to local prosecutors, Mr. Abbott said the state would ask the district court to “thoroughly review the defendant’s claims before the execution proceeds” in order to “protect the integrity of the Texas legal system.”

“The impartiality of a defendant’s trial and conviction must be beyond reproach,” Mr. Abbott said. “Thus, before the state carries out the ultimate, irreversible punishment, the appropriate trial court should thoroughly review this matter.”

The convicted murderer, Charles D. Hood, 39, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for the murder and robbery in 1989 of a couple he lived with in Plano, just north of Dallas.

Fingerprints linked Mr. Hood to the murders, and he was arrested the next day in Indiana driving a car belonging to the murdered man, Ronald Williamson, who had been Mr. Hood’s supervisor at a strip club where they both worked. Mr. Williamson’s girlfriend, Tracie Lynn Wallace, a former dancer at the club, was also killed.

Having exhausted all other appeals, Mr. Hood’s lawyers have tried to prove in recent months that Mr. Hood’s trial in 1990 was tainted because the judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the Collin County district attorney at the time, Thomas S. O’Connell Jr., were having an affair.

Neither Judge Holland, who is retired, nor Mr. O’Connell, who is in private practice, returned calls seeking comment.

Lawyers for Mr. Hood contend that the affair, first reported in 2005 in the online magazine Salon, was long rumored in Collin County’s legal circles, but no one with evidence about it had been willing to testify under oath.

“It’s a wall of silence we have been trying to break down,” said Greg Wiercioch, one of Mr. Hood’s lawyers.

In June, Mr. Hood’s lawyers got a sworn affidavit from a former assistant district attorney, Matthew Goeller, who said the romantic relationship “was common knowledge in the district attorney’s office, and the Collin County bar, in general,” at the time of the trial. Mr. Goeller said the affair was going on when he came to the office in 1987 and continued through 1993.

With this testimony in hand, Mr. Hood’s lawyers asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court, to stay the execution, but it rejected the motion, saying that the argument should have been raised sooner and that it relied on hearsay.

Mr. Hood’s lawyers then filed a motion in the county’s civil court that sought to compel Mr. O’Connell and Judge Holland to testify about their relationship.

That motion landed in the courtroom of Judge Robert T. Dry, who last week set a hearing date for two days after the scheduled execution, remarking, “In reality, you are exploring a civil lawsuit for the estate of Mr. Hood.”

Judge Dry also acknowledged that he knew Judge Holland and Mr. O’Connell well. “It is likely that every local judge knows them,” he wrote.

On Wednesday, Judge Dry suddenly recused himself, saying he had also been close friends and business partners with Judge Holland’s former husband, Earl Holland, who is now dead.

The case was then transferred to Judge Greg Brewer, who quickly ordered a hearing to be held on Monday to decide whether to require Mr. O’Connell and Judge Holland to testify.

The Source