Jewish Death Row Inmate Files Appeal Claiming Judge Was Anti-Semitic
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A Jewish death row inmate in Texas has filed an appeal alleging that the judge in the case was anti-Semitic and racist.
Randy Halprin, 41, said in the appeal filed last month that Judge Vickers Cunningham referred to him using anti-Semitic language and should have recused himself from his case.
Halprin was part of the “Texas 7” group of prisoners who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2000; six were apprehended over a month later. One committed suicide.
They were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Texas police officer who responded to a robbery perpetrated by the prisoners.
Cunningham sentenced Halprin to death in 2003. Four of the prisoners have been executed.
The Dallas Morning News reported last year that Cunningham, who is white, rewarded his children with a trust if they married someone who is white, Christian and of the opposite sex.
The appeal says that Cunningham’s anti-Semitic beliefs and statements violated the Constitution’s due process requirement, according to the Dallas News, and that Halprin is entitled to a new trial regardless of how strong the evidence is against him.
“Before, during, and after Randy Halprin’s trial, Judge Cunningham harbored deep-seated animus towards and prejudices about non-white, non-Christian people,” Halprin’s attorneys wrote. “He expressed these views frequently in private and they informed his thinking about his public service in the law. Judge Cunningham had a duty not to preside over a case in which he considered the defendant a … ‘[expletive] Jew.’”
Halprin, who was serving a 30-year sentence for injuring a child at the time of his escape, has said he did not fire his gun the night Officer Aubrey Wright Hawkins was shot 11 times and run over.
Another member of the Texas 7, Michael Rodriguez, also was Jewish, according to the newspaper.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
