Texas’ highest criminal court orders new trial for death row inmate over judge's alleged antisemitic bias

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SAN ANTONIO — A Texas appeals court ordered a new trial Wednesday for a Jewish man on death row — who was part of a gang of prisoners that fatally shot a police officer in 2000 after escaping — because of antisemitic bias by the judge who presided over his case.

Lawyers for Randy Halprin have contended that former Judge Vickers Cunningham in Dallas used racial slurs and antisemitic language to refer to him and some of his co-defendants.

Halprin, 47, was among the group of inmates known as the "Texas 7," who escaped from a South Texas prison in December 2000 and then committed numerous robberies, including the one in which they shot 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins 11 times, killing him.

By a vote of 6-3, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that Halprin's conviction be overturned and that he be given a new trial after concluding that Cunningham was biased against him at the time of his trial because he is Jewish.

The appeals court found evidence showed that during his life, Cunningham repeated unsupported antisemitic narratives. When Cunningham became a judge, he continued to use derogatory language about Jewish people outside the courtroom "with 'great hatred, (and) disgust' and increasing intensity as the years passed," the court said.

It also said that during Halprin's trial, Cunningham made offensive antisemitic remarks outside the courtroom about Halprin in particular and Jews in general.

"The uncontradicted evidence supports a finding that Cunningham formed an opinion about Halprin that derived from an extrajudicial factor — Cunningham's poisonous antisemitism," the appeals court wrote in its ruling.

The court previously halted Halprin's execution in 2019.

"Today, the Court of Criminal Appeals took a step towards broader trust in the criminal law by throwing out a hopelessly tainted death judgment handed down by a bigoted and biased judge," Tivon Schardl, one of Halprin's attorneys, said in a statement. "It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts."

The order for a new trial came after state District Judge Lela Mays in Dallas said in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham did not or could not curb the influence of his antisemitic bias in his judicial decision-making during the trial.

Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs to refer to Halprin and the other escaped inmates.

Cunningham stepped down from the bench in 2005 and is now an attorney in private practice in Dallas. His office said Wednesday that he would not be commenting on Halprin's case.

Cunningham previously denied allegations of bigotry after telling the Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he has a living trust that rewards his children for marrying straight, white Christians. He had opposed interracial marriages but later told the newspaper that his views evolved.

The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office was appointed to handle legal issues related to Halprin's allegations after the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.

In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court documents in which they said Halprin should get a new trial because Cunningham showed "actual bias" against him.

Of the seven inmates who escaped, one killed himself before the group was arrested. Four have been executed. Another, Patrick Murphy, awaits execution.