USA
Jewish death row inmate given stay days before execution over judge’s ‘antisemitism’
The sentencing judge is said to have taken ‘special pride’ in issuing the death sentences ‘because they included Latinos and a Jew’
October 7, 2019 10:17
The sentencing judge is said to have taken ‘special pride’ in issuing the death sentences ‘because they included Latinos and a Jew’
October 7, 2019 10:17A Jewish death row inmate in Texas – who was due to be executed on Thursday – has been given a stay of execution because of allegations his judge was antisemitic a few days before he was due to be executed.
Randy Halprin's appeal to Texas’s highest court, with the support of a hundred Jewish attorneys, was upheld after they argued he had been sentenced by an antisemitic judge.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Judge Vickers Cunningham is alleged to have called Mr Halprin, “that [expletive] Jew”, among other slurs, regularly during the trial.
In the motion to stay the execution, Tammy McKinney – who grew up with Mr Cunningham – said he took “special pride” in overseeing the death sentences of the Texas Seven “because they included Latinos and a Jew”.
The Texas Seven were seven inmates who escaped from prison in 2000 and carried out a string of robberies that culminated in the shooting of a police officer. Halprin is one of two surviving members of the Texas Seven, and has always protested his innocence in the shooting.
Amanda Tackett, who worked on Mr Cunningham’s 2006 campaign for Dallas district attorney, said she heard him say he was running for office to “save Dallas” from racial and religious minorities. Mr Cunningham denies the allegations made against him.
A trial court will now determine whether Mr Cunningham’s reported views and behaviour warrant a new trial for Halprin. He has been on death row for 15 years.
Halprin’s lawyers had initially been motivated to appeal the conviction after the Dallas Morning News reported last year that Mr Cunningham had established a living trust for his children which they could benefit from only if they married a white Christian person of the opposite sex.
Halprin was raised Jewish in Arlington's Congregation Beth Shalom.