The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has dismissed the appeal by former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver.
The ruling means Oliver will have to serve his 15-year sentence for the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was a passenger in a car that was leaving a loud party in Balch Springs on April 29, 2017. Oliver was one of the officers who responded after reports of underage drinking. As police were investigating, the car that Edwards was in began to drive away. Oliver testified during his trial that he had ordered the car to stop, but instead, the driver slowly pulled away. Oliver said he felt the car posed a threat to other officers and that he had to open fire.
"As it was gaining ground towards him, I had to make a decision - this cars about to hit my partner, there are threats inside the car, and when lethal force is being presented towards us I had no other option but to use lethal force to try to stop [it]," Oliver said.
A jury rejected the claim, finding Oliver guilty of murder and assessed punishment at 15-years.
"This should never have happened. What matters about this case is not that it was a victory for the state or even that justice was done. What matters is that Jordan Edwards should be alive today," said retired State District Court Judge Mike Snipes, who was the lead prosecutor in the trial. "He was a wonderful young man. He would have been a successful and wonderful grown man. This was a tragedy that should have never have taken place and I just wish that he was here walking with us."
In his appeal, Oliver argued the prosecution used statements that he made to an internal affairs investigator, statements that are protected under a U.S. Supreme Court case, Garrity v. New Jersey. The court held that "statements of police-officer defendants given on threat of employment termination are involuntary and that use of those statements by the prosecution violated the defendant officers’ right against self-incrimination."
Oliver argued that some of Oliver’s statements to internal affairs investigators were overheard and used by crime scene investigators. Both the trial judge and the appeals courts have rejected those claims.
"We would never, ever have attempted to use Garrity statements," Snipes said. "First of all, we didn’t need to. And second of all, if you do something like that you risk, not only losing your bar license but even being criminally prosecuted. So the whole thing was fatuous and inane from the very start."
The CCA had initially granted a petition for discretionary review to consider the Garrity claim. But has now reconsidered.
"Having considered the parties’ briefs and the record, however, we conclude that our decision to grant review was improvident. We, therefore, dismiss Appellant’s petition for discretionary review as improvidently granted," wrote Judge Barbara Hervey.
Oliver still has the option to ask the CCA to reconsider its ruling and to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Both are considered by legal experts to be long-shot chances that are rarely granted.
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