Houston cop killer gets execution date for 1988 slaying
A Harris County judge on Tuesday signed a death warrant for a cop killer originally sentenced to die three decades ago after a botched robbery at an adult bookstore.
Robert Mitchell Jennings is now scheduled to meet his end in the Huntsville death chamber on Jan. 30, the first Texas execution on the calendar for 2019.
It's the second time in three years the 60-year-old with claims of mental impairment has landed a date with death.
"It always feels good to see that justice is done," said long-time former District Attorney Johnny Holmes, who prosecuted the case. "And I think in that case justice was done."
The high school dropout has never claimed innocence in the 1988 slaying, but defense lawyer Randy Schaffer has doggedly fought to keep him alive with requests for a lesser sentence in light of Jennings' horrible childhood, mental impairment and apparent remorse - as well as his first lawyer's failure to raise those issues at trial.
"The criminal justice system promises equal justice under the law to every defendant," Schaffer wrote in May. "The system is measured, not by how it treats the best among us, but by how it treats the worst. Robert Mitchell Jennings has not received equal justice under the law."
On July 19, 1988, Houston police vice officer Elston Howard walked into the Empire Bookstore to write a ticket.
His undercover partner had just busted the store owner showing pornographic films without a permit and, wearing his vice raid jacket, Howard followed him inside to fill out the paperwork. He called for a squad car to take the man downtown to booking and was still standing behind the counter when Jennings burst in.
The robber spotted the police jacket, and started shooting. Two bullets hit Howard in the neck. He tried to flee but collapsed, according to court records.
Jennings shot him two more times as he lay face down.
Afterward, he demanded money, and the clerk handed over his wallet and cash from the register.
Jennings ran outside and hopped in a getaway car. But the driver, upon learning his accomplice had just killed a police officer, turned and shot him in the hand. Jennings dove out the car window and got himself to a hospital, where he was arrested and offered a written confession.
He was sentenced to death in 1989.
The condemned killer, who'd grown up in poverty, had a long criminal history including juvenile crimes and past prison sentences. He was born the child of rape and his drug-addicted mother openly resented him, frequently telling him she did not want him, according to court records.
In 1978, a psychologist found that he had an IQ of 65 and mild organic brain dysfunction, including damage caused by a childhood injuries - one from a rollover car crash and the other from a baseball bat. But there was also evidence Jennings was malingering, or at the least exaggerating his symptoms to delay court proceedings.
During trial, Jennings' attorney, who was defending two capital cases at the same time, didn't do enough to investigate and bring up those claims, Schaffer argued - so a jury heard little about reasons to consider choosing a life sentence over death.
They also didn't learn about his showing of remorse just after his arrest, and only heard from one witness who spoke on his behalf - a jailhouse chaplain who swore Jennings was a changed man.
In 2012, he won a new trial on punishment, but a higher court reversed the decision. Four years later, he got his first execution date - though the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed it with days to go.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...e-13119723.php
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