Resources
Read up about Cathy Henderson, her case and the terrible state of justice in Texas in these articles.
Tony Rizzo, of the Kansas City Star, interviewed Cathy recently at the Mountain View death row unit of the Gatesville prison. You can view the video at the Kansas City Star site. (Note that newspaper sites do not usually leave material online for very long, so this video may only be available for a short time.)
Petition for certiorari
Read the full text of Cathy's petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In order to grant cert, the Court must find that the petition deals with some overarching principle of law that has broad, general application to many situations. Because of that, it does not focus on the huge number of omissions and errors made by Cathy's defense. Instead, it focuses on issues where Cathy's lawyers believe her constitutional rights were infringed.
Where Time Stands Not Still
An excellent article by Philip Brasfield from The Touchstone about Cathy's case.
Storming Heaven for Cathy Henderson
Sister Helen Prejean's letter to members of her order about the campaign to save Cathy Henderson.
Families of the condemned feel punished, too
If Cathy is executed, the state of Texas will be creating a new set of victims: Cathy's family. She has three daughters; the youngest is 17 years old. As Cathy writes in a recent letter:
"My daughters are emotional wrecks right now. It isn't fair to them because they certainly haven't done anything wrong. My youngest told me she had been crying for days and that she was sick of crying."
On New Year's Eve the Austin-American Statesman published a story about the effect of executions on the families of those executed. You can read the article on the newspaper's site by clicking the link above, or view a PDF version of the article here.
The inspiring organization, Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, has also published a paper entitled Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind.
Texas' public defender system
In November, 2006, the Austin American-Statesman published an expose of the atrocious public defender system and the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals. The newspaper published a series of articles over two days and a number of editorial opinions, well worth reading. Below you'll find excerpts from these articles plus links to the full articles on the Statesman site (which requires free registration).
(Note: These articles refer to the system of publicly funded defence attorneys in Texas, and not to the Texas Defender Service, which is an independent non-profit law firm whose aim is to improve legal representation for death-row inmates. The TDS has some excellent resources available on its web site, including a particularly applicable article titled Deadly Speculation: Misleading Texas Capital Juries with False Predictions of Future Dangerousness.)
Editorial: Legislature should starve appeals court
Legislators should put the criminal appeals court out of business because the court has failed in its obligation to ensure that the condemned received competent legal help...
By now, many Texans know about some of the rulings that made national news, including the infamous sleeping lawyer case. In that case, the criminal appeals court judges saw nothing wrong with a defense lawyer who slept through key portions of his client's capital murder trial.
The same court said OK to prosecutors who hid evidence from defense lawyers in several capital murder cases involving indigent defendants.
This, of course, is the same court that has handled Cathy Henderson's appeals.
Editorial: Texas Needs agency for indigent capital murder defendants
In a two-day series published last week, American-Statesman writer Chuck Lindell reported on the magnitude of the problem. The work of more than a dozen lawyers was examined and the conclusions were shocking. Some attorneys who represented death row inmates in habeas appeals simply copied from their previous appeals or from other lawyers, whether the facts applied to their current cases or not. Others recycled claims that have been repeatedly denied, ignoring obvious avenues of investigation. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals mostly accepted their shoddy work.
...The system lacks accountability because it's nearly impossible for incompetent lawyers (appointed by the court) to be fired.
Series: Writs Gone Wrong
This excellent series examines the public defender system in Texas. It includes interactive audio-visual content (now no longer available online), plus the articles:
Sloppy lawyers failing clients on death row
When $25,000 is the limit on a life
Complaint attempts to force State Bar to levy punishment
