A Texas appeals court ordered on Thursday a new trial for Randy Halprin, a Jewish man sentenced to death for his role in the murder of a police officer in 2000. The new trial was ordered due to "antisemitic bias" on the part of the judge who presided over his case.
Halprin's attorneys argued that former Judge Vickers Cunningham of Dallas used racist slurs and antisemitic language in reference to the Jewish defendant. Halprin, 47, was among a group of inmates dubbed the "Texas 7."
The inmates escaped from a prison in southern Texas in December 2000 and subsequently carried out multiple robberies during which they killed a 29-year-old police officer. Among the seven inmates who escaped, one was found dead before the group was apprehended. Four were executed. Another gang member awaits execution.
The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled to overturn Halprin’s conviction and grant him a new trial with a 6-3 majority after concluding that Judge Vickers Cunningham was biased against him because he was Jewish.
The court found that Cunningham repeatedly used antisemitic narratives, making disparaging remarks about Jews outside the courtroom. Cunningham left his position in 2005 and now works as an attorney in a private firm in Dallas. His office informed local media that he won’t comment on Halprin’s case.
Halprin's sentence was originally scheduled for October 10, 2019, but he was granted the opportunity to file an additional appeal with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after raising claims against the judge.
Halprin argued that he wasn’t the one who fired at the officer but was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death under a Texas law that allows someone to be held accountable for another person’s crime if they aided or attempted to assist in the crime.
In 2018, local news outlet Dallas Morning News published an investigative report on the judge’s past, as he was then running for a senior position in Dallas County. Cunningham denied making racist and offensive comments but admitted to the paper that he had established a trust fund for his children, which would grant them larger sums of money if they married straight, white Christians.
A few days after the investigation was published, Cunningham lost to his Republican opponent. The Houston Chronicle reported that Cunningham had also told a friend that he wanted to “save Dallas from “(n-words), Jews, ‘w******s,’ and dirty Catholics.”
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