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Texas man who said death sentence was based on discredited testimony is executed for 1990 killing (www.pbs.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.

Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.

Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.

Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.

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[–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Absolutely, I can understand why he would say he felt sorry for the family. But saying sorry for the pain he caused is an admission of guilt.

I think the timeline went like this:

  • 1990 Brewer (then 19) and his girlfriend attack Laminack, killing him.
  • 1991 Brewer is convicted and sentenced to death.
  • 2007 Supreme Court overturns the decision because of a technicality on the jurors' instructions.
  • 2009 Brewer is re-tried, and again convicted, in part due to expert testimony from Coons.
  • 2010 In another trial, Coons' testimony was ruled as "insufficiently reliable".
  • Brewer's lawyer then raises an appeal in Texas over Coons' testimony in 2009. Appeals court says "you should've said that in 2009".
  • Brewer's lawyers escalate to the Supreme Court, however they decline to hear the case, deferring to the Texas Appeals Court's judgement.

Presumably, Coons' testimony could have been challenged in 2009 in exactly the same way as it was in 2010, but they didn't do this. I'm sure Coons is now seen as an unreliable witness, but he was considered reliable up until 2010.

It was actually the Texas Appeals Court that ruled that Coons was unreliable, however presumably the appeal in which they established that was granted for other reasons than his statement alone. Indeed, this is the 2010 case, there were 25 points in question. While the court ruled that Coons' testimony was unreliable, they still reaffirmed the conviction.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    It's something they must do, read clemency pleas they're basically all the same because boards want to see the same thing. Factually not guilty people have said the same thing in clemency letters.

    I dunno who exactly is at fault nor did I read that much into it, what I am saying is don't particularly base anything on clemency or parole letters, they're intentionally flawed so they can be used against the subject later, it's holdover slave shit that persists.

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