Randy Halprin: Jewish death row inmate and Texas 7 member to get new trial due to judge's 'antisemetic bias'
DALLAS, TEXAS: A death row inmate, who is Jewish, is in line for a new trial and conviction reversed after a judge, who presided over the case, "harbored antisemitic bias." The defendant was a member of a gang of prisoners who killed a police officer in 2000 after they escaped. Vickers Cunningham, a former judge in Dallas, is accused by Randy Halprin's attorneys of using antisemitic and racial insults to refer to the defendant and some of his co-defendants.
Halprin, 45, was one of the Texas 7 criminals who escaped from a prison in South Texas in December 2000 and went on to commit a number of robberies, including the one in which they fatally murdered 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins while robbing a sports store. One of the seven prisoners who fled killed himself before the group was apprehended. Halprin and another person, Patrick Murphy, are on death row while four others have already been put to death. "Cunningham not only harbored antisemitic bias at the time of trial, but ... he did not or could not curb the influence of that bias in his judicial decision-making," stated District Judge Lela Mays in a ruling issued from Dallas.
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