DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - A brief has been filed to stay the October 10th scheduled execution of Texas Seven member, Randy Halprin. Halprin, who is Jewish, was one of the inmates who broke out of a South Texas prison and murdered Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins, Christmas Eve 2000. 108 Texas Jewish Attorneys, along with leaders of the Jewish Reform Movement and American Jewish Committee have signed the brief.
Dallas attorney Marc Stanley helped write the brief. He says Vickers Cunningham, the judge who presided over the Texas Seven trials is a racist and anti-Semite.
Stanley says they are asking for a fair trial based on information that was published in a story last year in the Dallas Morning News. "Who made it public that behind Mr. Halprin's back, he called him a K*** and a 'dirty Jew.' He had similar references to the Latino defendants who have been executed and similar views on African Americans, et cetera."
He says "If you have a trial with a judge who is a bigot and doesn't let you know he has a bias going into your trial, that's no judge at all and no trial at all. It's just not fair. It violates our fundamental system of justice and the rule of law. Everybody is entitled to a fair trial and a judge who can call the balls and strikes of a trial without any pre-judgment of prejudice."
AJC General Counsel Marc Stern says "Well into the twenty-first century, it is beyond dispute that a trial conducted before a racist judge who boasts of his bigotry is no trial at all. "If the allegations here are true - and they unfortunately ring true - the trial was no trial, and the verdict was no verdict because the judge was no judge."
The brief has been filed with the Court of Criminal Appeals.
