The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has tossed out the death sentence of a man who had been awaiting execution for 45 years.
No Texas inmate has been on death row longer than Raymond Riles. He shot a man to death in Harris County in 1974 and tried to rob him. At his trial in 1976, jurors were not required to hear mitigating evidence. That law changed years ago. In Riles case, it was his Riles' mental illness. His attorney Theo Posel says at his trial "the defense was insanity. Almost the entirety of the evidence presented in his defense and also by the state concerned his mental illness and the effects that's had on him. And since he's been in TDCJ for the past 45 years, they've treated him as a person with serious mental illness."
She says Riles has been heavily medicated since and moved back and forth to the TDCJ psychiatric institution.
In 1985 he set himself on fire in his cell and required four months of treatment in a burn unit.
Beginning in 1989, death penalty juries were required to consider mitigating evidence. Riles' jury wasn't told that. Posel says "until really 2007, the Texas statute didn't afford jurors the constitutionally required ability to consider mitigating evidence. In the modern era of the death penalty the Supreme Court has required jurors to have that opportunity. That's why the death sentence that was overturned was so unconstitutional."
Riles' capital murder conviction still stands. The next step is to re-sentence him. She says the only option would be a life sentence or the death penalty. She is turning her efforts to a life sentence. She says because of his mental illness, Riles is incompetent to be executed and to stand trial.
Rukes other attorney Jim Marcus says re-sentencing to death is highly unlikely. "There would first be a proceeding in which his competency to stand trial was determined. And under Texas law that would happen before a jury before any capital trial would happen and I think that's about as far as it could go."
He could be parole eligible as his sentence is determined by the law at the time of the crime, before Texas had life without parole. There is, however, no mandatory release. "The board of Pardons and Parole and TDCJ will have a lot to say what the disposition is for Mr. Riles. Whether he's better off incarcerated or in a mental health unit. Whether there's a parole option that could put him in a mental health hospital."
They both are pleased with the court's decision. Marcus says "Mr. Riles isn't eligible for execution so warehousing him in solitary confinement on death row serves no punishment purpose."
