On death row in Texas

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 16

On death row in Texas

The case of Clarence Lee Brandley, one of 250 prisoners under sentence of death in Texas, raises disturbing questions about the use of the death penalty in Texas and beyond. Mr Brandley, 35 years old and black, came within five days of being executed in March for a crime two eye-witnesses now say he did not commit He remains among 247 men and three women under sentence of death at the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville. Texas has executed more people (22) than any other American state since the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of capital punishment in 1976. . <

Mr Brandley’s troubles began late in the summer of 1989 in the Montgomery County seat of Conroe, 64km north of Houston. Conroe, a town of 18,000 nestling in the East Texas piney woods, is a largely white place where blacks are distrusted. Local corruption is pervasive: earlier this month, a Federal court in Houston assessed damages of 3U530.000 against the sheriff, Mr Joe Corley, for abetting the beating of prisoners in the county Jail.

Mr Brandley was convicted, in 1981, by an all-white Jury in Conroe of the rape and murder of a 16-year-old white girl. The girl disappeared before a volleyball game at Conroe High School; Mr Brandley, who was a janitor at the school, and a colleague found her body in a loft high above the school auditorium.

The second janitor, Mr Henry Peace, who is white, said that on the afternoon of the crime a Conroe police* officer interrogating the pair said, “One of you is going to hang for this.” Then, Mr Peace continued, he gestured at Mr Brandley and said, “Since you’re the nigger, you’re elected.” Mr Brandley was arrested and, on February 14 1981, sentenced to death Texas-style, by lethal injection. The prosecution alleged that Mr Brandley was the only Janitor who had keys to the auditorium. He was also the only one without an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the murder. Evidence (Including two Caucasian hairs found on the victim) suggesting that someone else, probably a white, bad committed the murder was

allegedly lost or thrown away. But at a habeas corpus hearing last summer, three witnesses suggested that Mr Brandley might be innocent One, Miss Brenda Medina of nearby Cut And Shoot Texas, said that her former boyfriend, Mr James Dexter Robinson, told her the night after the murder that he had killed a girl and had to leave town. Two other witnesses saw Mr Robinson in Conroe round the time of the killing, one at the high school. But Mr Brandley was denied a new trial. The execution was set for March 26.,

In early February, a modernday version of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown entered the case. Mr James McCloskey, the president of Centurion Ministries of Princeton, New Jersey, has already succeeded in freeing four Innocent men, three hf them given life sentences, from prisons in New Jersey. He and another investigator managed to track down two other janitors who had been at the scene of the crime; their statements seemed to incriminate them and. exonerate Mr Brandley. Less than?-, a week

before the date, Mr Brandley’s execution was stayed. Soon after that, the attorneygeneral of Texas, Mr Jim. Mattox, was asked to look into the case to restore public confidence. His investigation seems to have consisted mainly of trying to give all the principal, figures lie-detector tests. .Mr Robinson passed his and was adjudged innocent Mr Brandley, whose original polygraph immediately after the crime was subsequently reinterpreted to say that he had failed, has said he will not take another such test from the state unless, if he passes, he is granted a new trial. .

The state appeals court is considering whether to order an evidentiary heariagjtatMr Brandley has at least one other hope. The civil-rights division of the Federal Justice Department has launched a criminal' investigation his ease. Agents from theF.B.L areiconducting interviews, and some of the witnesses’ stories arechanging yet agaiii. One -ease among hundreds under the shadow of the executioner. ?>«•.

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