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SAN ANTONIO — A Texas appeals court on Wednesday ordered a new trial for a Jewish man on death row — who was part of a gang of prisoners who fatally shot a police officer in 2000 after escaping — because the anti-Semitic bias of the judge who presided over it. case.

Attorneys for Randy Halprin alleged that former Dallas judge Vickers Cunningham used racial slurs and anti-Semitic language to refer to him and some of his co-defendants.

Halprin, 47, was among the group of inmates known as the “Texas 7” who escaped from a South Texas prison in December 2000 and then carried out numerous robberies, including one in which he they shot 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey. Hawkins 11 times, killing him.

In a 6-3 vote, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that Halprin’s conviction be overturned and he be granted a new trial after concluding that Cunningham was biased against him at the time of his trial because he is jewish

The appeals court found evidence that showed that during his lifetime, Cunningham repeated unsupported anti-Semitic narratives. When Cunningham became a judge, he continued to use derogatory language about Jews outside the courtroom “with ‘great hatred, (and) disgust’ and increasing intensity as the years passed,” the court said.

He also said that during Halprin’s trial, Cunningham made offensive anti-Semitic remarks outside the courtroom about Halprin in particular and Jews in general.

“The uncontradicted evidence supports a finding that Cunningham formed an opinion of Halprin that derived from an extrajudicial factor — Cunningham’s virulent anti-Semitism,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.

The court previously halted Halprin’s execution in 2019.

“Today, the Court of Criminal Appeals took a step toward greater confidence in the criminal law by vacating an irremediably tainted death sentence handed down by a bigoted and biased judge,” Tivon Schardl, one of Halprin’s attorneys, said in – a statement. “It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts.”

The order for a new trial came after state District Judge Lela Mays of Dallas said in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham did not or could not reduce the influence of his anti-Semitic bias in his judicial decision-making during the trial.

Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs to refer to Halprin and the other escaped inmates.

Cunningham resigned from the bank in 2005 and is now an attorney in private practice in Dallas. His office said Wednesday it would not comment on Halprin’s case.

Cunningham previously denied accusations of bigotry after telling the Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he has a living trust that rewards his children for marrying white, straight Christians. He opposed interracial marriage, but later told the newspaper that his views had evolved.

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office was assigned to handle the legal issues surrounding Halprin’s charges after the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.

In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court documents saying Halprin should be tried because Cunningham showed “actual bias” against him.

Of the seven prisoners who escaped, one committed suicide before the group was arrested. Four were executed. Another, Patrick Murphy, is awaiting execution.