A Times Editorial

Texas court is a bad example

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 10, 2000

Its official name is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. To its many critics, it is the Texas death court, a sobriquet that reflects its institutional bias.

Despite that -- or should one say because of it? -- some Florida politicians want a court of criminal appeals in this state. They claim the pure motive of wanting to relieve the Supreme Court's workload.

The real reason, however, is that the Supreme Court marches to the Constitution rather than to the demagogic drumbeat from across the street.

Two widely reported incidents have illuminated the reasons Florida should want no part of a Texas-style death court.

In the first, Texas Gov. George W. Bush had to reprieve a death-row prisoner because the Court of Criminal Appeals would not stay his execution long enough for sophisticated DNA testing that could not have been done before his conviction.

"Any time DNA evidence used in this context can be relevant as to the guilt or innocence of a person on death row, we need to use it," the governor said. But to the death court, finality is more important.

In the second case, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a convicted killer's death sentence after the Texas attorney general conceded that ethnic bias had influenced his sentencing. Testifying for the state, a psychologist had claimed that as Hispanics are overrepresented in prison, the fact that Victor Saldano is Hispanic "was a factor weighing in favor of future dangerousness." Prosecutors compounded the wrong by referring to it in their summation.

Yet the death court upheld the sentence on a 6-2 vote, ruling that such outrageous stereotyping was not the sort of "fundamental error" that demanded correction. Because Saldano's trial attorney had failed to object to the testimony, Saldano was out of luck.

This was too much even for the attorney general, who filed a "confession of error" in the Supreme Court. His spokesman said there may have been as many as eight other death cases tainted by similar bias against blacks or Hispanics.

It is pathetic that Texas could not count on its own court of last resort to rectify such un-American bias. But that's what happens when the purpose of a court is to dispense not justice but death.

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