Texas death row inmate denied new trial despite affair between judge and prosecutor

No retrial for condemned man after judge-DA affair

DALLAS — A Texas death row inmate won’t be able to argue for a new trial, despite admissions of an affair between his trial judge and the prosecutor, a court announced Wednesday.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 6-3 that convicted murderer Charles Dean Hood should have raised concerns about the affair between the now retired court officials in earlier appeals. The ruling overturned a lower court’s recommendation that Hood be able to make his case for a new trial based on the affair.

“Our argument is that they had this information and should have raised it in the earlier writ,” said current prosecutor John Rolater, the chief of Collin County’s appellate division. “We consider this a significant success for the state.”

Hood’s attorneys said in a statement that the affair led to a tainted trial and “obvious and outrageous violations” of Hood’s constitutional rights. The ruling will “only add to the perception that justice is skewed in Texas,” said Andrea Keilen, of the Texas Defender Service.

The rejection from the state’s highest criminal appeals court means a future appeal on the same grounds must go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“No one would want to be prosecuted for a parking violation — let alone for capital murder — by a district attorney who is sleeping with the judge,” another Hood attorney Greg Wiercioch said. “We are outraged by this breakdown in the integrity of the justice system. … Mr. Hood is entitled to a new trial before an impartial judge and a fair prosecutor.”

Hood’s attorneys have said they could not raise the issue of the affair until last year, because it wasn’t yet a known fact.

Hood, 40, a former bouncer at a topless club, was arrested in Indiana for the 1989 fatal shootings of Tracie Lynn Wallace, 26, and her boyfriend, Ronald Williamson, 46. He has maintained his innocence.

Hood was driving Williamson’s $70,000 Cadillac at the time of his arrest and his fingerprints were at the murder scene at Williamson’s home in Plano, a Dallas suburb. Hood said he had permission to drive the car and his fingerprints were at the house because he had been living there.

Hood won a reprieve last September, a day before his scheduled execution. No new execution date has been scheduled, and he still has at least one other appeal pending regarding whether jury instructions were flawed. A ruling favorable to Hood could result in a new sentencing hearing but not a new trial.

The Austin-based appeals court granted the stay of execution because of the issue of jury instructions. It was unrelated to the once secret romantic relationship between Hood’s trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, and Tom O’Connell, the former district attorney in Collin County.

O’Connell was the county’s elected district attorney from 1971-82 and from 1987-2002. Holland was a state district judge from 1981-96 before moving on to the Court of Criminal Appeals, where she served with eight of the nine current judges before resigning in 2001.

Neither Holland nor O’Connell have been publicly disciplined by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct or the State Bar of Texas.

Their relationship was apparently an open secret in Collin County legal circles. In an affidavit last year, former assistant district attorney Matthew Goeller said it was “common knowledge” that the judge and prosecutor “had a romantic relationship” from at least 1987 until about 1993. Hood was tried in 1990.

Last September, the former couple acknowledged under oath that they had an intimate relationship.

Telephone messages left with Holland and an attorney for O’Connell were not immediately returned.

Holland’s attorney Bill Boyd, who died last month, said last year that Hood’s original court-appointed lawyers heard “every rumor and innuendo” about the affair and still did not ask Holland to recuse herself, a sign of their faith in her fairness.

News of the affair last year resulted in condemnation from about 30 former prosecutors and federal and state judges, who signed a letter sent to Gov. Rick Perry. The letter stated that the sexual relationship “would have had a significant impact on the ability of the judicial system to accord Mr. Hood a fair and impartial trial.”