Author: Mick Mickelsen
Concerns about the low IQ of a death row inmate in Texas didn’t stop the state putting him to death this month. Marvin Wilson was executed on August 7, 2012, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments of his lawyers that he shouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty because of his low…
It’s the job of a criminal defense attorney to keep innocent defendants out of jail. But irrespective of whether they are innocent or guilty, those who end up in jails have a right to expect humane conditions when they are incarcerated. That’s not happening in many of Texas’ jails according to a civil lawsuit filed…
Georgia’s move to execute Warren Lee Hill, Jr., this month was controversial in two important respects. Hill has an I.Q. of just 70, raising questions about whether his execution could be in violation of the U.S Constitution. And Hill’s execution was scheduled to be the first in Georgia to use a controversial single drug lethal…
Plots about wealthy people planning the deaths of love rivals feature heavily in TV crime shows but are rare in real life. Many homicides involve people who know each other and many are spontaneous rather than meticulously planned. However a case in Lubbock, Texas in which a plastic surgeon is accused of paying an alleged…
Michael Morton describes his life as “starting from square one.” That’s because he was wrongly convicted for his wife’s 1986 murder and it took a quarter of a century for new advances in DNA to exonerate him. Morton’s case is highlighted in the second installment of the Texas Tribune’s series that looks at how prosecutorial…
The supporters of so called “Stand your Ground” laws say they were enacted to make America a safer place. However, an analysis of these laws in states including Texas, suggest they have led to an increase in the homicide rate but no apparent reduction in crimes such as burglaries and robberies. An analysis by the…
An intoxicated manslaughter case has been making headlines in Texas because of its tragic nature. Five family members in one car died when their father crashed the vehicle into a bulldozer as he drove home from a Father’s Day party at Medina Lake in San Antonio. The fifth victim died on June 21. Eight-year-old Abram Demers was…
The jailing of Texas banker R. Allen Stanford, has led to comparisons with Bernie Madoff and Enron in the annals of white collar crime. Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in jail. His forlorn appearance in a Houston court room was a far cry from his jet setting days on his fleet of private airplanes…
The case of Clint Broden’s client Michael Arena, who walked out of prison on June 1, 2012, almost 13 years into a 20-year prison sentence, was a high profile example in Texas of a wrongful conviction. But according to a new registry of wrongful convictions compiled by the University of Michigan Law School in a…
On Wednesday, June 13, 2012, Raul Rodriguez, a retired firefighter was found guilty of murder for the shooting and killing of Kelly Danaher in 2010. The trials sentencing phase is to begin on Thursday, June 14. The facts, as best as I have been able to ascertain, are that Mr. Rodriguez confronted his neighbors who…