A judge in Harris County, Texas, the execution capital of the country, recommended earlier this month overturning a man’s death sentence, finding that he received ineffective legal assistance at trial.
In a highly unusual 158-page court filing, Judge Natalia Cornelio found that Jeffery Prevost’s court-appointed lawyers unreasonably delayed their investigation into mitigating evidence — information that may reduce a defendant’s culpability, including evidence of an abusive childhood, addiction, untreated mental illness or positive actions since the crime — and that the lead attorney, Skip Cornelius, “carried an excessive caseload” while representing Prevost. Those lawyers failed to uncover information about his mother drinking while pregnant with him and signs that he suffered from “brain deficiencies,” Cornelio wrote.
The Harris County district attorney’s office objected to Cornelio’s recommendation and urged the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) to deny Prevost relief. The district attorney’s office declined to comment.
If the CCA agrees with Cornelio’s recommendation, 64-year-old Prevost’s death sentence will be overturned, and the case will go back to Harris County. At that point, the state could either pursue the death penalty again or offer a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Although allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel are common in death penalty cases, it is extremely rare for a judge to agree. The Supreme Court has held that to succeed on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, the individual must prove that their lawyer was objectively “deficient” and that the outcome would have been different with a competent lawyer. Even when the evidence is compelling, judges are supposed to be “highly deferential” to the lawyer’s judgements and avoid second-guessing their strategy, according to the court. The standard is so high that even a lawyer admitting they did a bad job is often not…
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