Granted a new trial in 1980 after having been sentenced to death, Jerry Hartfield avoided another death sentence by not seeking a new trial, but now claims he’s wrongfully imprisoned because he has not been convicted of any crime
After his death sentence was overturned and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted him a new trial, Jerry Hartfield’s case was never retried. Apparently the prosecution was in no hurry to retry the case since he was still in prison and his lawyers were not anxious to seek a new trial, fearing that he would be sentence to death again. So he’s been roosting in prison for 34 years without a conviction. And now his lawyers are saying he’s being wrongfully imprisoned.
INMATE STUCK IN LEGAL LIMBO FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES
By Mike Tolson
Houston Chronicle
April 20, 2014
Of all the odd criminal cases from Texas that make their way into national news, perhaps none is more tangled and perplexing than that of Jerry Hartfield, a 57-year-old prison inmate who has spent more than three decades in prison without a lawful conviction on the books.
A state judge denied last week a motion by Hartfield's attorney to free him because the opportunity to conduct a fair trial - and reasonable defense - has been made impossible by the passage of time. A ridiculous and perhaps unprecedented amount of time, some say.
"This is by the far the longest period I have seen where someone has been awaiting trial," said Jeff Newberry, an attorney for the Texas Innocence Network at the University of Houston who is representing Hartfield in appeals courts. "It's definitely unprecedented. I think the longest I came across was eight years."
State District Judge Craig Estlinbaum was not swayed, pointing out that for all the years Hartfield sat in prison without a valid judgment against him after his conviction was overturned, it wasn't until 2006 that he was moved to do something about it. That delay meant he pretty much forfeited his right to complain about it now, the judge said. That places the fault for years of incarceration with no valid conviction not on the judges or lawyers involved, but on an inmate with an IQ supposedly below 60.
"The responsibility placed upon the defendant or his counsel to assert the right is not a burdensome one - a motion for speedy trial or motion for trial setting need do little more than demand that a trial should be set and conducted," Estlinbaum ruled, rejecting a motion that if granted would have dismissed the charges against Hartfield.
Granted new trial in '80
Cynics might suggest Hartfield had every reason not to demand a new trial after the Court of Criminal Appeals had granted him one in 1980. A jury had found him guilty of the 1976 murder of Eunice Lowe at a Bay City bus station, where she worked as a ticketing agent. It did not deliberate long before sentencing him to death. A new trial could expose him to the sentence once more.
While acknowledging the state's negligence in leaving Hartfield's case unresolved, Estlinbaum pointed out the advantages that now befall him as prosecutors try to reassemble the case against him. The murder weapon was lost, he pointed out. Some witnesses have died. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have come down since he was first tried that could benefit him, especially one exempting the intellectually disabled from capital punishment. A 1977 evaluation of Hartfield, a Kansas man who was working construction in the area at the time, puts his IQ at about 60 and points out he cannot read, write or understand written material that is read to him - potentially powerful evidence to knock out a death sentence.
While defense lawyers and Matagorda County prosecutors have finally begun to prepare for a new trial, Newberry will keep arguing that simple fairness calls for a quick and simple resolution.
"The state of Texas has kept Jerry Hartfield illegally incarcerated for over 30 years - it's time to let him go," Newberry said. "If you could give him a new, fair trial, that would be one thing. But his ability to put on a defense has been so compromised. With the passage of so many years, any new trial would not be fair."
In recent court filings, Matagorda County District Attorney Steven Reis argued that lawyers for the state did not act in bad faith in not retrying him because they were unaware the matter was technically still pending. Reis, who could not be reached for comment, also wrote that Hartfield couldn't produce any evidence that he wanted a new trial during most of his prison stay.
For three years, from the summer of 1977 to the summer of 1980, Hartfield's case was unremarkable for a state that was in the business of supplying death row with a quickly expanding population. But then the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his conviction, ordering a new trial because of an error during jury selection.
Had the appeals court's decision occurred several years later, Hartfield would have received a new trial for the matter of punishment only. The error the court cited was relevant to the jury's decision to impose the death penalty, not his guilt or innocence. But at the time, Texas legal procedure called for a new, full trial. That's what should have happened.
System breaks down
Little in Hartfield's case has gone quite as it should, however. State prosecutors asked for a new hearing, which the state's highest criminal court denied in January 1983. Seeking to avoid a new trial, prosecutors scurried to get the death sentence commuted to life before the court's reversal order became final. And on March 15, 1983, Gov. Mark White signed the commutation order.
Lawyers for the state felt they had fixed the problem that caused the reversal by making moot the death penalty. In later years, such a commutation would have sufficed. In this instance, however, the Court of Criminal Appeals did not specify that the conviction would be reinstated if the death sentence was taken away. It ordered a new trial.
The attorney general's office argued the state had 15 days to preserve the conviction and commute the sentence before the appeals court's decision was finalized. But the governor's signature came too late because the state miscalculated the timing, the court later ruled. By that time, there was no valid death sentence to commute.
For reasons that are not clear, the judicial machinery broke down and Hartfield did not get his second trial. Nothing in the court record suggests that his lawyer at the time took steps to secure one. Local prosecutors apparently did not pursue a new trial, either, while the lawyers for the state apparently assumed the matter had been resolved by the commuted sentence. In truth, of course, the commutation had no legal force.
So in prison Hartfield remained. Had he filed a motion on his own, with no lawyer involved, asking for his trial, the issue could have been resolved relatively quickly. Newberry said Hartfield had no idea he was supposed to do anything, in part because he no longer had a lawyer and because his intellectual deficits did not allow him to know what was going on.
No resolution in sight
In 2006, a fellow inmate aware of Hartfield's situation helped him file a writ of habeas corpus that revived his prosecution. Eight years later, his future remains as confused as his past. Local prosecutors have said there is substantial evidence to convict him once more. Defense lawyers insist a confession has no weight because he had no idea what he was signing, and that physical evidence that could be tested for DNA is not available.
A return to death row may be unlikely. Beyond that, no one seems to agree on the right course of action. If nothing else, Newberry said, the predicament that befell Hartfield illustrates a glaring weakness in the criminal justice system.
"There is one thing it should draw attention to," he said. "Guys who are not sentenced to death don't have lawyers appointed for them. Once the death sentence was removed, he didn't have anyone to represent him. They are left to raise these appeals on their own. And Mr. Hartfield, with an IQ below 60, couldn't really do that."
No comments:
Post a Comment