The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a new trial for one of the last living members of the Texas 7.

Randy Halprin was part of a group of escaped prisoners who escaped from the Connally Unit, a prison in Texas, in 2000 and, while escaping, shot Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins.

Halprin was sentenced to death under Texas’ “party law,” which allows defendants to be convicted and punished based on the intent of others in a group.

The appeals court halted Halprin’s execution in 2019 — six days before he was scheduled to die — when Halprin’s lawyers argued he should stand trial because the judge presiding over his case referred to the inmate — who is Jewish – with racial criteria. insults and anti-Semitic language.

right Death Penalty Information Center in December 2022, Dallas County Judge Lela Lawrence May recommended a new trial for Halprin, finding that former Dallas County Judge Vickers Cunningham “had an actual, subjective bias” against Halprin at the time of his trial because he is jewish

Halprin’s lawyers presented decades of evidence of Cunningham’s repeated use of homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist slurs.

Judge Mays found the testimony credible and said Cunningham had shown a long pattern of anti-Semitism.

On Wednesday, the court granted that new trial based on what Judge Mays concluded was a “violation of due process, equal protection of the law and the free exercise of religion.”

Halprin testified at trial that he did not carry a gun or fire any shots during the robbery in which the officer was killed.

“I told them I wasn’t going to pull a gun, and they said, ‘Okay, just collect clothes, get a shopping cart and collect clothes,'” Halprin said.

Of the seven inmates who escaped, only two are still alive, Halprin and Patrick Murphy, who did not participate in the robbery and waited in a car outside. Murphy is awaiting execution.

Halprin is expected to be sent to Dallas for his retrial.

Copyright 2024 Texas Public Radio