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Thread: Paul David Storey - Texas Death Row

  1. #21
    JusticeBeliever
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    It's not a question between the offender and the family of the victim. It's not personal. It's a question between offenders and the entire society. The man or woman killed could be anyone that casually worked here or passed here at that moment. He committed the crime against the entire collectivity so he deserves to die. It's the action (MURDER IN THIS CASE) that we have to judge, not the will of the victim's family. Death penalty doesn't depend on the will of the victims' relatives. If it is, we have something that depends on circumastances and randomness.

  2. #22
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    Great post, JusticeBeliever.

  3. #23
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Judge says Texas death row inmate's sentence should be reduced due to false evidence at trial

    By Emma Platoff
    The Texas Tribune

    A Tarrant County judge has recommended that a death row inmate’s sentence be changed to life without parole after reviewing evidence that there was false evidence introduced at his trial.

    Paul Storey was sentenced to death in September 2008 for the 2006 murder of Jonas Cherry, the assistant manager at a miniature golf course near Fort Worth that Storey and another man were robbing. Storey was set for execution in April 2017, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted Storey’s execution less than a week before it was set to take place. His defense attorneys accused prosecutors of lying to jurors during his original trial. The state’s highest criminal court sent the case back to the Tarrant County trial court to review those claims.

    According to court documents, a prosecutor told the jury during Storey’s 2008 trial that “it should go without saying that all of [Jonas Cherry’s] family and everyone who loved him believe the death penalty was appropriate.” But Cherry’s parents, Glenn and Judith, say that was a lie.

    “We do not want to see another family having to suffer through losing a child and family member,” the Cherrys said in a letter to the governor about Storey's case. “Due to our ethical and spiritual values we are opposed to the death penalty.”

    Judge Everett Young wrote Tuesday that “had this evidence been disclosed, there is a reasonable probability” that the jury would have decided differently. Those omissions amounted to several constitutional violations, Young said.

    The case now returns to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which has final say over Storey’s case.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05...ut-parole-due/

  4. #24
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    ARTICLE 11.071 APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS DISMISSED WITH WRITTEN ORDER

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...6-9bb7961948f2

    CONCURRING OPINION JUDGE HERVEY

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...b-2bc94149af2f

    DISSENTING OPINION JUDGE YEARY

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...c-e8009e6389ae

    DISSENTING OPINION JUDGE WALKER

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...c-dd915520aab8
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

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  5. #25
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Aaron, can the TCCA now uplift the stay and the Tarrant County DA set an execution date?
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  6. #26
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    A trial judge recommended taking Paul Storey off death row. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said no

    The state's highest criminal court rejected the judge's finding that Storey should be resentenced to life in prison after prosecutors falsely said at trial that the murder victim's family wanted the death penalty

    Paul Storey was one step away from escaping the death penalty. Then came the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

    The state’s highest criminal court Wednesday rejected the trial court judge’s recommendation to resentence Storey to life in prison without the possibility for parole after a three-day hearing last year. Storey’s sentence was being reconsidered after it became known that Tarrant County prosecutors falsely said at his 2008 trial that the family of Storey’s victim, Jonas Cherry, wanted the death penalty. Cherry’s parents have since said that they have always opposed capital punishment, including for their son’s killer.

    In Wednesday’s ruling, the court explained that it was taking the unusual step of opposing the trial judge, who it acknowledged “is in the best position to assess the credibility of the witnesses.” While the court order didn't argue against the finding that Storey's trial lawyers were unaware of the Cherrys' opposition, it ruled that one of his appellate attorneys — who is now dead — might have known, claiming there was no evidence to show he didn't.

    The judges also ruled that since Cherry’s father said he often talked about his anti-death penalty views, the appellate attorney, Robert Ford, could have found out through “the exercise of reasonable diligence.”

    “The trial court found that Ford did not know that the victim’s parents opposed a death sentence for [Storey],” the court’s order states. “This finding is not supported by the record. [Storey] did not present any evidence showing what Ford did or did not know regarding the victim’s parents’ anti-death penalty views.”

    “And although the trial court found that Ford generally ‘had a strong reputation for his diligence,’ [Storey] presented no evidence showing that Ford was diligent in his particular case,” the ruling continued.

    Generally in death penalty cases, if evidence could have been raised at an earlier appeal and wasn’t, it is not allowed to be used in future appeals. Storey’s lawyers could not immediately be reached Wednesday.

    Storey, now 34, was sentenced to death for the 2006 murder of Cherry, the 28-year-old assistant manager at a miniature golf course near Fort Worth, during a robbery. Court records state that Storey and another man shot Cherry while he was on his knees begging for his life. At his 2008 trial, a prosecutor said that “it should go without saying” that all of Cherry’s family “believe the death penalty is appropriate.”

    But months before his scheduled execution in 2017, Cherrys’ parents, Glenn and Judith, wrote to Gov. Greg Abbott and the Board of Pardons and Paroles, asking for a life sentence. They said they never wanted the death penalty and had made that clear to Tarrant County prosecutors.

    “As a result of Jonas’ death, we do not want to see another family having to suffer through losing a child and family member,” they wrote.

    One of the jurors in Storey’s trial, who has asked Texas legislators to change what he says are confusing jury instructions in capital cases, also wrote an affidavit that he would have never voted for a death sentence if he knew the Cherrys didn’t want it.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals stopped his execution, and sent the case back to the trial court to determine if the Cherrys’ opposition could have been discovered earlier. The judge found that Ford had exercised due diligence as Storey’s appellate attorney, and that the trial prosecutors withheld the information and knowingly presented false evidence at trial. He recommended Storey’s sentence be changed to life.

    Though the majority of the nine-judge Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed, three dissented from Wednesday’s ruling. In a 26-page dissent, Judge Scott Walker said asking the Cherrys their opinions on the death penalty goes beyond “reasonable diligence.”

    “‘Reasonable’ diligence would not go prying into the private feelings of a murder victim’s family without a very good reason for doing so,” Walker wrote in his dissent, which Judge Michelle Slaughter joined. “The trial court found that ‘in most cases family members of murder victims do not wish to speak to lawyers representing the person found guilty of killing their loved one.’”

    Judge Kevin Yeary said in his dissent, also joined by Slaughter, that he would at least set the case for additional review instead of simply rejecting the appeal, which the court did.

    “What I would not do is simply declare that [Ford] — who is now deceased and unable to respond to claims about his diligence—failed to diligently investigate the present claims, and dismiss the subsequent writ application on that basis,” he wrote.

    Three other judges, however, signed onto an opinion by Judge Barbary Hervey in support of the court’s order, saying the case is not one of false evidence “because no evidence of the family’s preference was introduced at trial.” She said that the prosecutor’s closing argument is not evidence at trial.

    Hervey also stated that even if evidence of the Cherrys’ opposition was brought up at trial it would not change the horrors of the case, also noting that some jurors cried during Cherry’s wife’s testimony at trial explaining how her husband's murder impacted her life.

    "In light of all of this, it is difficult — if not impossible — to conclude that the victim’s parents’ general opposition to the death penalty would cast 'the whole case in a different light,'" she wrote.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10...minal-appeals/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  7. #27
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    The TCCA made the right decision this time. Storey deserves the needle

  8. #28
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    I wonder how eager Tarrant County is to close this case.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  9. #29
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Death row appeal: Ruling on dead lawyer requires seance to prove

    By Chuck Lindell
    The Austin American-Statesman

    Lawyers for death row inmate Paul Storey, admitting they are seeking an “extraordinary decision in this extraordinary case,” are asking the state’s highest criminal court to take another look at a rejected appeal that claims a prosecutor lied to Storey’s jury.

    The defense lawyers argue that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals should not have dismissed the appeal on Oct. 2 by blaming the actions of a lawyer who previously represented Storey but has since died and is unable to defend himself.

    That 6-3 ruling, the petition argued, “imposes a burden unlike anything this Court has ever demanded of the State or defense — proof directly from beyond the grave.”

    “Short of a seance, this new burden is one that can never be met,” said the petition, filed late Wednesday.

    The problem for Storey, however, is that there is no process in place for appealing the earlier ruling, which is why defense lawyers framed the petition as a “suggestion for reconsideration on the court’s own initiative.”

    It is, admittedly, a long-shot bid for a man who was sentenced to death in the shooting death of Jonas Cherry, the manager of a miniature golf course in Hurst, during a 2006 robbery.

    But Storey’s appellate lawyers, Mike Ware of Fort Worth and Keith Hampton of Austin, argue that the stakes are high, not only for their client but for the proper administration of justice.

    “A death penalty verdict should not be based on a lie, and it was in this case,” Ware told the American-Statesman.

    Three key findings


    Storey, now 35, was five days from execution in April 2017 when the Court of Criminal Appeals returned his case to Fort Worth and ordered the trial judge to examine defense claims that a prosecutor lied to jurors during the trial’s sentencing phase by claiming that the victim’s entire family favored a death sentence for Storey.

    In reality, Cherry’s parents have long opposed the death penalty and told prosecutors they did not want Storey put to death for the crime, court records show.

    During three days of hearings in fall 2017, prosecutors testified that they told Storey’s trial lawyers about the parents’ views, although there is no record of such an exchange and defense lawyers denied it happened. Prosecutors also said Cherry’s father offered to testify in favor of a death sentence during Storey’s punishment phase — a conversation the father denied having during one of the hearings.

    Visiting state District Judge Everett Young rejected the prosecutors’ testimony, saying it lacked credibility, and recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals toss out Storey’s death sentence and order a new punishment phase trial, keeping his capital murder conviction intact.

    Young made three key findings:

    - Prosecutors violated their duty to disclose favorable evidence to Storey’s trial lawyers by withholding information that the victim’s parents opposed a death sentence, which can be powerful mitigating evidence for jurors deliberating a capital punishment case.

    - A prosecutor introduced false evidence during closing arguments by saying the victim’s entire family favored a death sentence, information that jurors would find hard to ignore.

    - Prosecutors continued to hide the information during Storey’s appeals.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals, however, rejected the judge’s recommendations two weeks ago in 6-3 ruling that sparked a lively debate with two dissenting opinions and one concurring opinion.

    The decision rested on a state law that gives death row inmates only one chance to appeal the constitutionality of their conviction and sentence, although additional appeals are allowed if new evidence turns up that was not available earlier.

    The arguments surrounding the parents’ death penalty opinions were included in a second appeal by Storey — but not in his original appeal filed in 2011 by lawyer Bob Ford, who has since died.

    Had Ford been “reasonably diligent” in preparing the first appeal, he could have discovered the misstatement by prosecutors years ago, the six judges rules. Because that information was available for the first appeal, the majority dismissed the latest appeal without considering the new arguments.

    The majority rejected conclusions reached by the district judge, who devoted several pages of findings to explain why he believed Ford, consistently described as an exceptional and tenacious lawyer, acted properly in preparing Storey’s first appeal.

    Impossible standard


    Storey’s current lawyers are asking the appeals court judges to reconsider their opinion, arguing that it created an impossible standard.

    “The overwhelming and uncontradicted circumstantial evidence that Bob Ford was unaware of the Cherrys’ opposition is insufficient. Counsel must now directly prove a negative — lack of knowledge — from the testimony from a deceased attorney,” they wrote to the court.

    Defense lawyers also filed a second suggestion that asked the appeals court to take another look at Storey’s case to address an unrelated issue.

    Lawyers Ware and Hampton said they recently discovered that case records forwarded to the appeals court included briefs filed by prosecutors but not defense lawyers. For a court that prides itself on a thorough review of the case record, having a “one-sided presentation of argument” should be troubling, they wrote.

    “This Court should at least have the whole record and all the arguments before dismissing a trial court’s findings, conclusions and recommendations,” they wrote.

    No execution date has been set or Storey, and the appeals court has no deadline to act on either suggestion.

    https://www.statesman.com/news/20191...eance-to-prove
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  10. #30
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    Abuse of the writ.

    Get a death warrant.

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