In the case, the jury deadlocked 11-to-1 on May 8, 2013 in favor of conviction in the trial of Kaitlyn Ritcherson, a 21-year-old who is charged in the death of Huston-Tillotson women’s track team member and biology major Fatima Barrie.

The student athlete died in December 2011 of wounds she sustained during a fight outside an Austin club.

The prosecution built its case for first degree murder on claims that Ritcherson was acquainted with a man who was involved in an argument in the club that carried outside. She did not know the victim.

Ritcherson has maintained her innocence throughout the case.

A Travis County district judge declared a mistrial after a hung jury deliberated for almost two days but was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

“One juror will not change his vote,” said District Judge David Crain, according to a report in Statesman.com. It reported the jury was deadlocked 11-1 in favor of finding Ritcherson guilty. Crain received two notes from the jury, one Tuesday afternoon asking the judge for instructions on what to do next, and another just after lunch Wednesday saying they were still split 11-1.

Assistant District Attorney Gary Cobb was quoted as saying he will try Ritcherson again, but he did not know when. “One person couldn’t be convinced while the others felt she committed murder. We are committed to trying her again,” he said, according to Statesman.com.

When a mistrial is called the trial is concluded without a decision for guilt or innocence.

A mistrial may also occur during the course of a trial, if one side violates rules of evidence, such as a prosecutor mentioning a defendant’s previous convictions.

When a trial ends in a mistrial, the state will often try the defendant again. However, a mistrial often suggests the prosecution’s case is weak and the charges may be dropped.

Under a bill presently advancing through the Texas Legislature, hospitals would be forced to provide improved treatment for victims of sexual assault.

In a 31-0 vote on May 1, 2013, the Senate approved SB 1191 by Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth. Under the provisions of the bill nearly every hospital would be required to either provide the resources necessary to gather physical evidence of a crime or to provide a transfer of the alleged victim to a different hospital.

In March Texas lawmakers heard from a woman who drove to three different hospitals seeking to preserve the physical evidence. In the end her attacker went free.

The Star-Telegram reported: “Davis’ proposals represent significant progress. Just six years ago, the state did not even collect statistics on sexual assault.”

According to most recent figures available, the Department of Public Safety counted 19,011 victims in 2011.

Like a woman who gave evidence to lawmakers, who said she was raped by a co-worker, more than 17 percent of those who said they were raped described their attackers as a male “acquaintance.” Nearly 8 percent were raped by men they considered their boyfriends. CBS reported the U.S. Justice Department estimates two thirds of sexual assaults go unreported, and reporting doesn’t always lead to prosecution.

Under the bill a state agency would be mandated to keep a list of hospitals that perform the service.

Another bill progressing through the legislature would tackle the backlog in the testing of rape kits in Texas.

The Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry (SAFER) Act, would increase Justice Department grant resources for local agencies that carry out DNA evidence testing, North Texas Daily reported. It would help agencies “test and eliminate backlogged rape kits.”

A many as 20,000 cases in Texas have stalled due to untested evidence kits. It’s a state of affairs that fails to inspire confidence in the criminal justice system overall.

House Bill 166, has been put forward by Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio. It would create the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission, named after a defendant who died in prison serving time for a sexual assault it was later discovered he had not committed.

Sadly, these kinds of cases are all too common in Texas. While some of those who are wrongfully convicted get a belated taste of freedom, Cole never saw the world outside a prison again.

The Commission would be tasked with reviewing cases like his, finding the root cause of the wrongful conviction and making recommendations to avert future miscarriages of justice.

“Backers of the measure have tried to move the bill through in previous sessions without success,” reported the Austin Chronicle.

Finally the measure has a better chance of success and is attracting bipartisan support. Even so, on April 23, 2013, the newspaper noted a number of probing and hostile questions from the House floor, mostly from Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, who questioned language within the measure.

He asked why would the Commission not be subject to sunset until 2025. He also questioned why the bill mentioned “wrongful execution” if the bill was about wrongful convictions.

An amendment by Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, reduced the time to Sunset to eight years, in 2021.

Phillips also “took exception to a provision that would allow courts in future proceedings to use findings of the commission – including whether judges or lawyers participated in misconduct leading to the conviction,” reported the Austin Chronicle.

Cole was accused of raping a college student in 1985. He spent 14 years in prison and died a decade before DNA testing cleared him of the crime in 2009.

It’s just one of a number of high profile wrongful convictions in Texas. Another well known case is that of Michael Morton, who was exonerated after serving 25 years wrongfully convicted of his wife’s murder.

This month a district judge found probable cause the “prosecutor in his case tampered with evidence and concealed records,” reported ABC news.

“Hopefully this will make it somewhat easier and give some motivation to state legislators to pass one of the bills that are before them right now,” Morton was reported as telling ABC. “So hopefully what happened to me doesn’t happen to you.”

This session has seen the Senate approve the “Michael Morton Act” which requires prosecutors to share more evidence with defense teams. The bill is now headed to the state House, where lawmakers who back the Cole commission remain optimistic the added attention will help more wrongful conviction legislation to be enacted.

Fox News reported the authorities in Massachusetts are sending evidence from the Molly Bish homicide investigation to the Orchid Cellmark lab in Dallas.

Bish was just 16 in 2000 when she disappeared at Comins Pond in Warren where she was working as a lifeguard.

It took another three years for her body to be discovered. Investigators say she was first abducted, then killed. It remains one of the highest profile unsolved cases in the north east.

According to Fox News, Timothy J. Connolly, a spokesman for District Attorney Joseph D. Early, declined to tell the Telegram and Gazette newspaper what items he would be sending to the Dallas lab for testing, but said “some of the evidence gathered in connection with the investigation has been tested in the past.”

He said the testing of the items is likely to be done more quickly at Dallas’ Orchid Cellmark than at the state police lab because of its heavy workload. These strains on the system caused by high demand can hold up the criminal justice system and impede defendants getting a fair trial. Privately owned Labs such as Orchid Cellmark play an important role.

Fox News reported last year, authorities searched the home of Rodney Stanger in Florida, a “convicted killer possibly linked to Bish’s murder.”

They were looking for any clues that might implicate him in the disappearance and killing of Bish.

At present Stanger is serving a 25-year prison term in Florida for the 2008 stabbing death of his live-in girlfriend, Chrystal Morrison.

The Telegram reported Molly’s sister, Heather Bish, said she was waiting for test results on cigarette butts, duct tape and other items.

Recently scientists from Orchid Cellmark played a significant role in giving evidence in a trial that followed a high profile wrongful conviction.

In March, 2013, the Texas Tribune reported the scientists gave evidence in the murder trial Mark Norwood who was accused of the killing of Christine Morton.
“Prosecutors concluded their presentation of DNA evidence that links him to a blue bandana found about 100 yards away from the North Austin crime scene. That evidence led to the exoneration of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in 1987 and spent nearly 25 years in prison. It also led to Norwood’s arrest and indictment,” reported the Tribune.

Scientists from Orchid Cellmark, who performed the DNA testing, told jurors how they tested the bandana in the lab and gave details as to the precision of the matching. They said they located Christine Morton’s blood on the garment mixed with biological material from Norwood.

“Huma Nasir, a forensic scientist at Orchid Cellmark who conducted some of the testing, said the statistical probability of the male DNA she found matching with any other Caucasian man but Norwood was 1 in 662.9 trillion,” reported the Texas Tribune.

A jury convicted Norwood of capital murder in the 1986 death of Christine Morton in Williamson County on March 27, 2013.

Although Norwood was sentenced to life in prison, he will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years because of laws that were enacted when the crime took place.

Lewis was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman from Tyler and killing her fiancé in the course of a home burglary in 1990. A previous execution date was stayed due to arguments that Lewis had extremely poor intellectual functioning. However, more recently a court ruled in 2005 that his intellectual abilities were not an issue in the case.

Lewis was 50 and had a lengthy criminal history. He was executed in the state’s death chamber in Huntsville.

“No final appeals were filed to try to delay the execution, which was the second of the year in Texas,” reported KWTX.com.

Lewis was convicted of capital murder for shooting a man to death more than two decades ago during a home break-in and then raping the murdered man’s fiancée.

Lewis is the second execution in Texas this year. The first, Carl Blue, was put to death in February.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Texas executes far more criminals than any other state. Almost 500 people have been executed since 1976 compared to 110 in Virginia, the state which has the second highest number of executions.

Eleven more executions are scheduled in the coming months in Texas.

Texas regularly executes defendants with low levels of intelligence.

For example, Marvin Wilson was executed on August 7, 2012, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the arguments of his lawyers that he shouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty because of his low IQ.

Wilson, 54, received a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville.

In putting the inmate to death, the state overruled concerns by defense attorneys and other groups about his mental capacity.

Wilson’s attorneys, in their appeal to the Supreme Court, argued he was too mentally impaired to receive capital punishment. They pointed to a 2004 psychological test that indicated his IQ was 61, which is below the generally accepted minimum competency standard of 70.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2002 that outlawed the execution of mentally impaired people, but the court left it to the individual states to establish what constitutes mental impairment.

CBS 11 News reported Dallas County Grand Jury recently indicted trooper Kelley Helleson on two counts of sexual assault and two counts of official oppression.

The charges stemmed from a roadside cavity search of two Texas woman, which was captured on dashcam video.

Helleson’s attorney has maintained his client passed a tough lie detector test, and did not assault or fondle Angela and Ashley Dobbs.

“Experts say the cavity search conducted on the side of the road raises the question of how the trooper was trained in the first place,” reported CBS.
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) recently announced that Helleson will be terminated after she carried out a cavity search of the motorists, who are now suing her along with another trooper.

DPS says “Any search that unreasonably invades the bodily integrity of a citizen is in violation of the Fourth Amendment and is therefore in violation of DPS policy,” CBS reported.

The Grand Jury has also indicted fellow Trooper David Farrell, who was with Helleson, on a theft charge, after Angela Dobbs complained her prescription bottle of painkillers went missing after the search. No drugs were found in the troopers’ search.

DPS has not terminated Farrell who remains suspended pending the outcome of an administrative investigation.

According to reports the investigations against both troopers could place other investigations into jeopardy because the DA’s office can’t sponsor their testimony in cases they were involved in.

The article looked at the conviction of Christian M. Allmendinger, 39, of Houston, who was convicted in 2011 by a federal jury today for his role in a $100 million fraud scheme with more than 800 victims across the United States and Canada.

Allmendinger received a life sentence over his handling of A&O, a company set up in Houston. Recently he learned his sentencing appeal had failed.
He’s not the only white collar offender to be meted out a tough sentence.

This trend was illustrated last year with the jailing of Texas banker R. Allen Stanford, which led to inevitable comparisons with Bernie Madoff and Enron in the annals of white collar crime.

Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in jail in a Houston courtroom. The financier, who lived a lavish lifestyle, was convicted of defrauding billions of dollars from investors in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. He was sentenced to 110 years in jail.

Typically in federal fraud cases prosecutors will seek heavy sentences. In this case they asked for the maximum sentence of 230 years. Defense attorneys wanted 10 years, but later said they weren’t surprised as the judge handed down the 110 year sentence, KHOU News reported.

Writing in the New York Times Peter J. Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University, said: “Even in the less notorious cases, the prison terms for financial crimes have been moving higher, raising questions whether sentences once reserved for violent criminal are appropriate for white collar defendants.”

As criminal defense attorneys we specialize in representing individuals and businesses charged with various types of complex fraud and white collar offenses in federal court.

Few are as high profile as the case of R. Allen Stanford and Christian M. Allmendinger, although most white collar and fraud charges in federal court result in multi-count indictments.

The guidelines for sentencing that are used in federal court cases take into account the amount of loss that is alleged to have occurred in determining whether a prison sentence is warranted upon the conviction for a fraud or white collar offense. A fraud loss as low as $30,000 could result in a prison sentence for a person convicted at trial of a fraud or white collar offense even if the defendant has no previous criminal record. All of the evidence suggests the penalties are becoming increasingly harsh for these kinds of crimes.

Those supporting the rally include former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman and current Cowboys cornerback Brandon Carr. NFL Hall of Famer and former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith recently tweeted that he plans to attend the rally.

According to the Texas Council on Family Violence there were 196,713 incidents of family violence in the state in 2009. Women are the victims in the majority of cases. In that year 111 women were killed by their intimate partner, 12,213 adults received shelter from their abusive relationships and 15,905 children received shelter.

In 2002, the Texas Council on Family Violence conducted a statewide polling on prevalence and attitudes on domestic violence which revealed 74 percent of all Texans have experienced some form of domestic violence or know a family member who has.

Domestic violence can entail a range of offenses. Many of the cases we see are assaults or aggravated assaults.

A simple assault is essentially defined as intentionally causing “offensive contact” with someone else. Where no bodily injury is alleged to have occurred, simple assault cases are classified as Class C misdemeanors.

A Class A misdemeanor assault means an assault where a bodily injury allegedly occurs. It may be nothing more than a scratch or a bruise. The misdemeanor charges are filed in the criminal county courts and usually involve the hiring of an attorney. Often a conviction will lead to probation.

Domestic situations can often lead to aggravated assault allegations in which the defendant is alleged to either have exhibited a “deadly weapon” or caused serious bodily injury during the assault. These are serious charges that can lead to 2-20 years imprisonment. If the victim is a police officer, the penalty range rises to 5-99 years of imprisonment, rather than a second degree offense.

Sexual assaults such as rapes are another common occurrence in abusive domestic relationships.

When couples are in an abusive situation passions run high and there can be many gray areas as well as false claims. That’s why it’s important to hire a competent attorney as soon as possible. An attorney will hire a skillful private investigator to interview the complainant and all witnesses.

Thomas gouged out both of his own eyes in jail. He brutally murdered his estranged wife along with their young son and her 13-month-old daughter. According to reports, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic while in prison, and has heard voices in his head since childhood.

Despite all of this evidence that Thomas has a severe mental illness he is awaiting execution in Texas.

He was featured recently in an editorial in the Dallas Morning News which stated “the saga of condemned Texas murderer Andre Thomas resembles a medieval horror story featuring madness, a family’s homicidal slaughter, the defendant’s self-mutilation and a waiting executioner.”

The editorial went on to point out the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has “deferred to the jury verdict, ruling that Thomas “is clearly ‘crazy,’ but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law.”

The fact this man who is clearly severely mental ill is on death row at all is disturbing because the execution of the insane violates the U.S. Constitution as established in the 1986 case Ford v. Wainwright.

However, the Ford decision left the determination of sanity up to each state.

“Constitutional protections for those with other forms of mental illness are minimal, however, and dozens of prisoners have been executed despite suffering from serious mental illnesses. The National Association of Mental Health has estimated that five to ten percent of those on death row have serious mental illness,” stated Amnesty International.

The organization points out in May 18, 2004, Kelsey Patterson was executed in Texas although he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1981 and “did not possess rational understanding at his trial.”

The state’s poor record over the execution of those with mental illnesses has led to a new bill that would limit the state’s ability to execute them.

The Texas Tribune recently highlighted how Texas executed Marvin Wilson last year for the 1992 murder of Jerry Robert Williams in Beaumont, Texas.

“The standards used to determine whether a Texan convicted of murder is mentally fit to be executed are based in part on the fictional character Lennie from John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice and Men, a fact that enraged the author’s son,” stated the article.

“I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic,” Thomas Steinbeck the son of the famous writer told the publication. “I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way.”

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has filed Senate Bill 750, which he says would establish more scientific standards to establish when a convicted Texan is too intellectually disabled to face the death penalty.

It may not progress far given that it revives a decade-old fight with prosecutors, who say Ellis’ proposal would make it too easy for defendants to claim they are mentally ill to avoid the death penalty.

That’s the conclusion of a new report which found the amount of evidence that can be obtained from prosecutors varies widely across the state. The report found more uniform transparency could help prevent wrongful convictions.

Texas Defender Service, an organization which represents death row inmates, and Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that campaigns for social justice, researched discovery practices in 40 counties across Texas.

“They found that the wide variation in discovery practices among prosecutors makes access to justice dependent upon the jurisdiction in which the defendant is charged,” reported the Texas Tribune.

Rebecca Bernhardt, a Texas Defender Service spokeswoman, was quoted in the article as saying the research bolstered legislation filed in both the House and Senate that would create “uniform discovery procedures and require both prosecutors and defense lawyers to share more information in criminal trials.”

“We hope that lawmakers get an understanding of the status quo and understand the problems that exist under our current, outdated discovery statute,” Bernhardt said, according to the Texas Tribune.

The survey adds more impetus to efforts to reform the discovery laws in Texas. This is not a new campaign, but it’s picked up pace since Michael Morton was exonerated in 2011. Morton spent a quarter of a century in prison for his wife’s murder before DNA evidence revealed his innocence.

The case of Morton highlights alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Morton’s lawyers claim the prosecutor who secured his conviction deliberately failed to submit important evidence that could have prevented the wrongful conviction and led to the apprehension of the real killer.

At present a court of inquiry is looking into whether former prosecutor and current Williamson County state District Judge Ken Anderson should face criminal charges over his key role in the Morton case.

Anderson denies the allegations and says he did nothing wrong in the case.

But the issue is wider than the Morton case. Supporters of reform say an open file policy requiring prosecutors to disclose information would help prevent miscarriages of justice such as Morton’s.

In the recent study, researchers found that “discovery rules vary not only from county to county, but sometimes even among the state lawyers in a single prosecutor’s office,” reported the Texas Tribune.

The report recommends lawmakers require automatic discovery so as defense lawyers are not required to file a motion to obtain evidence against their client. It says prosecutors should always turn over documents such as witness statements, police reports, expert reports and criminal histories.

Some of the procedures that are taken for granted in some states, are almost nonexistent in parts of Texas.