An update to this post can be found here.

Grant Hank Skinner is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 24th.  Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals  ruled that DNA evidence which could point to either guilt or innocence need not be tested. 

The issue is procedural: Skinner’s original attorney didn’t ask for a DNA test, so the defendant is out of luck.

A recent article in the Texas Tribune offers a good synopsis of the case: “On New Year’s Eve 1993, police in the Panhandle town of Pampa found Skinner’s live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, strangled and beaten and her two mentally disabled adult sons stabbed to death. Investigators immediately turned to Skinner, who had a history of petty crime and drug and alcohol abuse. A jury convicted him in less than two hours, based largely on evidence that showed the victims’ blood on Skinner’s clothes and on the testimony of an ex-girlfriend who later recanted her story.”

Rob Owen, Skinner’s current attorney, argues that the gruesome murders could have been committed by Twila Busby’s uncle, a man with a violent temper who had an incestuous relationship with Busby. 

Skinner claims that he was passed out on the couch at the time of the killings, under the influence of vodka and codeine.

Obviously, we are not dealing with sympathetic, high-status folks here.  If we were, state officials would do the right thing in a heart beat.  Instead, process trumps truth yet again.

Skinner’s attorney at trial was a former Gray County district attorney who had twice prosecuted his client in the past for drug-related offenses.  Amarillo attorney Matthew Wright theorizes that the original defense attorney may have passed on a DNA test because he feared it might indicate guilt.  Perhaps so, but now that Skinner is facing execution what possible reason (apart from procedural issues) could there be for denying a DNA test?  Several groups have offered to pay for the test, so cost is not a factor.

“In 2000, the state agreed to test some of the evidence,” Wright says, “expecting it to disprove Skinner’s claims. But that didn’t happen; a hair found clutched in the victim’s hand came, not from Skinner, but from one of the victim’s relatives.”

This case isn’t going away, so the state of Texas might as well conduct the tests.  If the DNA suggests guilt, state officials can lay the matter to rest.  If the evidence implicates someone other than Skinner, Texas can claim to be tough but fair.  But if Skinner goes to his death with the evidence untested, Texas will once again have shown callous disregard for truth and justice.

In her article in the Texas Tribune, Brandi Grissom offers a grim assessment of the The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles:

The seven-member board makes life-or-death decisions, recommending to the governor whether an execution should be delayed, called off or carried out. Yet it’s one of the least transparent agencies in state government, making it all but impossible for Owen, or any other member of the public, to decipher how or why it makes decisions. The board doesn’t have to hold public meetings on clemency cases like Skinner’s. It’s not required to give any reasons for its recommendations. Most times, the seven members simply fax in their votes. Without a majority vote, clemency is denied. What’s more, there are no guidelines in statute or in the board’s rules that outline a basis for decision-making. And nearly all the documents the board uses to make its decisions are kept secret under state law — even after an inmate is executed.

Hank Skinner has two remaining legal options: Governor Rick Perry could order a 30-day reprieve and order that the DNA evidence be tested, or the federal Supreme Court could issue a stay of execution.  Perry is unlikely to intervene unless the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends intervention.  The board rarely makes this kind of recommendation and, even when it does, Perry has a history of ignoring their advice.

On the other hand, the Skinner case is getting nationwide attention and, as we learned in Tulia and Jena, national scrutiny changes the functioning of the criminal justice system in fundamental ways.

It should never have come to this.  State officials are clearly afraid that DNA evidence might raise questions about the fairness and credibility of capital justice in Texas.  Better just let the man die, they reason.  But if Hank Skinner dies on March 24th his name will be added to a growing list of innocent or possibly innocent inmates proudly executed by the Lone Star State.