USA - Texas. Robert Mitchell Jennings should be resentenced, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled.

Robert Mitchell Jennings should be resentenced, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled. Jennings, 56, Black, killed Officer Elston Howard during a robbery at Empire Bookstore in July 1988. The Houston vice officer was in the process of arresting an Empire clerk for showing a sexually explicit movie without a permit when Jennings entered the store and pulled a gun. The robber shot Howard twice in the neck, and then twice more as the officer lay facedown on the floor. When Jennings told the driver of the getaway car, David Harvell, about shooting the officer, Harvell fired his own gun at Jennings, and Jennings escaped through the passenger window. Jennings pleaded not guilty to the charge of capital murder, but a jury convicted, and the trial court sentenced him to death in 1989. After Jennings exhausted his state appeals options, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the Southern District of Texas. The January 2009 petition argues that Jennings suffered from an ineffective attorney who ignored evidence of his client's mental impairment and disadvantaged background. Defense attorney Connie Williams opted not to have Jennings' mother Flora or his sister Carla testify at sentencing. "The state obtained an affidavit from Williams in 2003 that he did not call Mrs. Jennings or Carla because he did not think that their testimony would be beneficial, as Mrs. Jennings was not sympathetic to petitioner and Carla was relatively young when petitioner left home," according to the petition. Though Judge Hughes said Jennings' attorneys may have had a legitimate basis to not call the mother, the sister's testimony could have helped. "Counsel's explanation for not calling Jennings's sister makes no sense," Hughes wrote. Hughes ordered that Jennings be released from custody if Texas does not provide a new sentence or sentencing hearing within 120 days. The judge stayed the order until the completion or expiration of all postjudgment motions and appeals.