Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Tarrant County prosecutors say in a court filing that one of the Texas 7 prison escapees deserves a new trial because the judge in the capital murder trial was biased against him, The Dallas Morning News reports.
This comes after defendant Randy Halprin, who is Jewish, argued he didn’t receive a fair trial in 2003 because the presiding judge, Vickers Cunningham, held antisemitic views. Halprin was one of seven inmates who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit prison in December 2000. Weeks later, he was involved in the killing of Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins, and he was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the incident.
Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals stopped Halprin’s scheduled execution in 2019 and sent the case to State District Judge Lela Mays, who recommended in 2019 that Halprin should get a new trial.
The Sept. 27 filing by Tarrant County District Attorney Sheron Wilson and prosecutor Anne Grady is in agreement with Mays’ recommendation.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will make the final decision on whether Halprin will get a new trial.
Cunningham, a longtime East Dallas resident and graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, made national news years ago for comments he made to The Dallas Morning News regarding a living trust he set up for his children. He included in the trust “milestones” the children have to meet to receive payouts; one of those “milestones” was marrying a white person. He told The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he had accepted his son’s relationship with a woman of Vietnamese origin but couldn’t change the trust, which was created in 2010.Â
