By David Protess, President, Chicago Innocence Project
in the Huffington Post
Hank Skinner is in the final round of a fight against two heavyweights. One is the Texas lawmen who want him executed. The other is an often-fatal ailment that saps his strength and leaves him in constant pain. The odds makers give him little chance. Death, after all, is undefeated.
But Skinner, 51, is not about to throw in the towel. He is sustained by the love of his wife, Sandrine, and his daughter, Natalie. And, he is buoyed by the latest findings in his case, which support his steadfast contention for two decades -- that he is an innocent man.
It all began with a bloodbath on New Year's Eve in 1993. That is when Skinner's live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons were stabbed to death in their Panhandle home. Skinner was physically present at the time of the slayings and naturally became the prime suspect.
Local law enforcement scoffed at Skinner's claim that he was unconscious on the living room couch from drinking a vodka cocktail laced with codeine and anti-anxiety meds. They doubted he suddenly awoke to find the trio dead or dying, then stumbled to a neighbor's house for help. If that were true, why would the neighbor say that Skinner ordered her not to call the cops?
Believing from the start that Skinner was the killer, the cops failed to investigate alternative suspect Robert Donnell, Twila's uncle (now deceased). Donnell had molested her in the past, frightened her with crude sexual advances at a New Year's Eve party less than an hour before the murders and vanished after she headed home. He was next seen scrubbing his pick-up truck from top to bottom on a frigid New Year's Day.
The jury did not hear much of the exculpatory evidence. Convinced of Skinner's guilt by his presence at the scene and the neighbor's testimony, jurors unanimously recommended death. A Panhandle judge obliged them in 1995.
Five years passed before Northwestern University journalism students began looking into the case. They interviewed the neighbor, who said she was coerced into falsely testifying against Skinner, adding that he had mumbled incoherently and was barely able to walk. (A toxicology report later revealed that Skinner was likely semi-comatose and lacked the agility to kill three able-bodied adults.) They also interviewed a man who saw Skinner passed out on themcouch before the party.
Another neighbor, Deborah Ellis, told the students that Donnell, the uncle, had regularly worn a jacket that was strikingly similar to one found next to Twila's lifeless body. The jacket was covered with blood and hairs, ripe for DNA testing. So were hairs found clutched in Twila's hand. And, in a death row interview, Skinner said he wanted modern forensic tests conducted.
When the new evidence and Skinner's call for DNA were made public in 2000, the D.A. promised testing. But he reneged when the results began trickling in. Three items, including bloodied gauze found just outside the Busby home, excluded Skinner. There would be no more tests, the D.A. and his successors announced.
Skinner's lawyers unsuccessfully fought the no-test policy through the Texas and federal courts. Running out of appeals, they asked the Supreme Court to take the case. On March 24, 2010, Skinner was served the customary last meal next to the Texas death chamber. With less than an hour to spare, the high court finally weighed in. The justices ordered a stay of execution.
In a landmark decision the next year, the court ruled that Skinner was entitled under federal civil rights law to have access to the biological evidence in his case. It seemed the truth would finally be known. But the Texas Attorney General stubbornly refused to produce the evidence. By this time, Hank Skinner had been on death row for 16 years.
The A.G. relented only after a public tongue-lashing by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2012. At that point, the reason for the twelve years of stonewalling became apparent. The jacket found next to Twila's body? The single most important piece of physical evidence in the case? It had vanished. Poof! "Somehow or another...no one's ever been able to find that thing," shrugged the lawman in charge of storing evidence.
But the hairs in Twila's hand had been preserved, and last month the results came back. They were a revelation. Three of the hairs genetically ruled out Skinner. More significant, they were microscopically different from the three victims' hair -- but belonged to the maternal side of their family. Since Robert Donnell was Twila's mother's brother, the hairs were genetically consistent with his DNA.
Will Skinner's lawyers ask a judge to exhume Donnell's body? Perhaps, though the next logical step is a hearing on the new DNA tests, which the Texas A.G. still says point to Skinner's guilt. (In a statement, a spokesman for the A.G. said the three hairs must have come from the victims, even though a state lab ruled out this possibility.)
Are there other ways to determine whether Donnell committed the crime? Witness Deborah Ellis thinks she has the answer. In a follow-up interview with a new group of journalism students, for the first time Ellis was shown a crime scene photo of the actual jacket. She gasped, saying she was "100 percent sure" that the jacket belonged to Donnell. Ellis went on to say in a sworn statement that she and Donnell's wife had searched everywhere for the jacket when Donnell had not been seen wearing it after the murders. But the jacket could not be found.
As for Hank Skinner, he should be contemplating a triumphant return to his family after a 20-year nightmare. But living 23 hours a day in a 6.5' by 10.5' cage, and eating processed food served through a metal slot, has proven hazardous to his health.
Last month, Skinner collapsed on the floor of his cell. "I was in pain so bad I passed out from it after it blinded me," he recalled in a recent letter. "The 'nurse' said nothing was wrong with me, that I was faking." When the symptoms persisted, Skinner says he was taken to the emergency room and given a CT scan. The diagnosis: acute pancreatitis.
Skinner was raced to John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. "I stayed in for three weeks, almost died twice," he wrote. "Came back to the unit 08.23 and was denied all meds, relapsed, almost died again." Sandrine Skinner confirmed that his blood pressure plummeted to 85/53 and a priest was called to administer last rites. "When I left [death row] I weighed 218, I now weigh 174, lost 44 - 47 lbs in 28 days...Couldn't eat the whole month," he recalled.
"Through a miracle I survived....I'm starting to eat solid food again and not puking. This ailment usually kills. My priest's niece died of it. The cause is unknown." He believes that his supporters "kept me from going in[to] darkness."
Today, Skinner is back on death row, where he soon learned of another tragedy. This time, it involved a prisoner whose case he has followed closely for a decade. His wife broke the news that Anthony McKinney had recently died, alone in an Illinois prison cell, before powerful evidence of his innocence could be heard. Skinner was shaken. "Another one gone," he sighed. And he has read everything about Texas inmate Timothy Cole, who was posthumously exonerated after DNA evidence proved his innocence -- a decade after he died of a heart attack while behind bars.
Since Skinner landed on death row, Texas has executed 414 prisoners, many of whom he knew.
Like these men and women, Skinner realizes he will not cheat death. But he still intends to defeat his mortal adversary, the Texas lawmen, and recover from his near-fatal illness. Dare he dream about life after exoneration? The pain stands in the way.
But Skinner clings fervently to every prisoner's cherished hope. He wants to die free.
Pamela Cytrynbaum contributed to this article.
Comments
Hank Skinners Ungodly Mistreatment Needs Our Prayers!
Hank Skinners Ungodly Mistreatment By Texans Rick Perry & Greg Abbott Needs Our Prayers!
by Hillary's Agenda
Wednesday Sep 4th, 2013 10:57 PM
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Sadly there are some very devious folks in Rick Perry's Texas Demonic Posse that decided on their own to execute Hank Skinner,even if he never committed these 3 murders he was charged with.
When the State of Texas admitted losing but most likely destroyed Hank Skinner's most crucial exoneration DNA evidence after having possession of it for 16 yrs >Hank Skinner should have been set free !
This great country can not allow Texas Governor Rick Perry & State Attorney General Greg Abbott current+future executions or long term imprisonments while their State loses possible exculpatory evidence anytime the Supreme Court Justices spank their State Courts crazed legal decisions.
Just because Rick Perry & Greg Abbott hate the Federal Government telling them what to do concerning various other issues,does not equate to Texas having the ability to have Hank Skinner's crucial possible life~saving evidence trashed without even an investigation.
These 2 powerful Texas politicos sent Hank Skinner to be executed prior proper DNA tests, which resulted in our U.S. Supreme Court stopping the execution from taking place just one hour prior Hank Skinner losing his life..
***Obviously what both of these powerful Texas politicos are really saying to the rest of our country by claiming "States Rights with no Federal Oversights" *Only our Texas posse will decide who we want to wrongfully execute & imprison and Uncle Sam can go take a hike..
§Texan Hank Skinner's Crucial Vanishing Exoneration DNA Evidence is A Texas Wikileaks..
by Hillary's Agenda Friday Sep 6th, 2013 3:11 PM
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Hank Skinner,Who Says Being Handicapped is an Excuse 4 Executing Innocent Texans ?
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott Knows Having A Heart For Justice Does Not Take Legs.
Why Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is Not Sleeping Nights ...
Balderdash to anyone saying Texas Governor Rick Perry's Demonic posse offered justice to Hank Skinner at his initial Trial !
Hank Skinner Death Penalty Case: Texas Jurors Reconsider Verdict
3 years ago
** MEDILL INNOCENCE PROJECT
This story was reported by Rachel Cicurel, Gaby Fleischman, Emily Glazer, and Alexandra Johnson.
In March 1995, a jury left a Fort Worth, Texas, courthouse having unanimously decided that DNA testing and compelling testimony led to an inescapable verdict: Henry "Hank" Skinner deserved to die for the murders of his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons in their home on New Year's Eve 1993.
Twila was bludgeoned to death; her sons were stabbed. The jury primarily based its decision on evidence that showed the victims' blood on Skinner's clothes and the testimony of a neighbor. They deliberated for less than two hours, and Skinner has been on Texas' death row ever since.
But the jurors were never presented with complete DNA results of the physical evidence, nor could they have imagined that the prosecution's star witness would recant her testimony and that subsequent developments would strengthen the case that another man may have been responsible for the murders.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would take Skinner's case and determine whether he can bring a civil rights action to seek DNA testing of the remaining evidence found at the scene. The untested evidence includes vaginal swabs, bloodied knives, fingernail clippings, hair clutched in the female victim's hand, and a blood-stained windbreaker strikingly similar to one worn by the alternative suspect.
In April of our senior year, the four of us -- 22-year-old journalism students from Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project -- arrived in Texas in search of the jurors. (The trial had been moved to the Fort Worth area from rural Gray County in the Panhandle because of massive pre-trial publicity.) The Medill Innocence Project investigates possible wrongful convictions in homicide cases. In the five days allotted for our reporting trip, we hoped to get in touch with at least one juror. We were pleasantly surprised, however, when more than half the jury opened their doors and memories.
In light of new developments that have surfaced in the 15 years since Skinner's trial, several of the original jurors are no longer sure of his guilt. Five say they might have had reasonable doubt at the time of the trial if they had known then what they know now. Seven are calling for DNA testing of all the evidence so they can be certain they convicted the right man. An eighth juror we contacted declined to comment.
Some jurors had followed developments in the case, searching the Internet and Texas newspapers for Skinner's name; others avoided it, hoping never to revisit this traumatic experience. In kitchens, livings rooms, garages, and eateries across Fort Worth and suburban Arlington, the jurors recalled the experience of being sequestered -- how detached they felt watching "Forrest Gump" rather than the news of the day.
But plugged back in 15 years later, they considered statements by two of Twila's friends that the alternative suspect -- Twila's uncle, Robert Donnell, who died in 1997 -- allegedly raped her on two occasions and stalked her at a party the night of the murders, as well as those by neighbors who said they had seen him tearing the carpeting out of his truck the morning after the crime and repainting the vehicle within a week.
They also took into account a new medical report indicating the likelihood that Skinner was barely conscious from drinking a mixture of alcohol and codeine at the time of the crime, and sworn statements by the prosecution's star witness, Andrea Reed, who repudiated her testimony. In the original trial, Reed, Skinner's ex-girlfriend who lived nearby, had testified that when Skinner came to her trailer shortly after the murders, he made incriminating statements and demanded that she not call the police. But in 1997, she recanted her testimony to a private investigator, claiming that law enforcement had intimidated her into falsely testifying. In 2000, she repeated that claim to another group of Medill Innocence Project students.
"I had no idea that she recanted her story, her testimony; that brings new light," said Tiffany Daniel, the youngest member of the jury. "That puts a lot of questions in my mind."
Sitting at her kitchen table, Daniel slowly reintroduced herself to an experience she had closed well over a decade ago. "We were responsible for sentencing," she said. "If we weren't presented with all the evidence that could potentially free a man or convict a man...if [he's put to death] and if this man didn't do that, that would be something I have to live with."
Many of the jurors interviewed were taken aback by the amount of untested evidence, stunned that even the blood on two of the murder weapons had not been analyzed. The seven jurors agreed that all the evidence should undergo DNA analysis. "That's the only way you can come to the right conclusion of if he's innocent or guilty," said Danny Stewart, the jury's foreman. "I would hate personally to put a man to death if he's innocent."
Lynn Switzer, the current district attorney of Gray County who is being sued by Skinner in the case before the Supreme Court, has refused to test all the remaining evidence. "If defendants are allowed to 'game the system' then we will never be able to rely on the finality of the judgments entered in their cases," Switzer said in a statement following the court's decision to take Skinner's case. "Mr. Skinner has been given plenty of opportunity to show that additional testing could prove his innocence, but he could not show that."
Texas courts have repeatedly denied Skinner's requests for DNA tests, ruling that he should have had the testing done at the time of the trial, a position Switzer supports.
Switzer was appointed district attorney by Texas Gov. Rick Perry after District Attorney Richard Roach was convicted of stealing and abusing methamphetamines. In January 2005, the FBI arrested Roach in the Gray County courthouse -- a place where he had both injected meth in front of an employee and made a career of prosecuting constituents for using the same drug. Roach had ousted the late John Mann, who served Gray County during Skinner's trial in 1995.
At his trial, Skinner was represented by Harold Comer, another former district attorney of Gray County. In that role, Comer had earlier prosecuted Skinner on charges of theft and assault. Although Comer resigned from office in 1992 before pleading guilty to criminal charges of embezzling cash confiscated in drug cases, he was later appointed by the judge to represent Skinner at his capital murder trial. To many jurors' current dismay, however, Comer didn't request DNA tests prior to trial, saying he did this to protect his client from potentially damaging results.
"All of it should have been tested," juror Stewart said. "All the DNA evidence should be tested. Period."
Some additional tests were done following Skinner's conviction. After being confronted on CourtTV in 2000, Mann had a change of heart. He ordered additional tests on head hairs clutched in Twila's hand, bloody gauze on the front sidewalk of her home, a cassette tape in the bedroom, and other items.
While some results put Skinner in the home -- where he indisputably was at the time of the crime -- the tests on one of the head hairs, the blood on the sidewalk, the cassette tape, and an unmatched fingerprint found on a plastic bag containing a bloodied knife all excluded Skinner. At that point, the district attorney's office -- led by Richard Roach when he took over from Mann -- halted further testing and returned the evidence to a storage locker, where it sits today.
It was this most recent round of DNA tests that prompted five jurors to say they could have reached a different verdict if they had known at the time of the trial what they know today. The two others said they really didn't know if the tests would have changed their minds.
"It would have been reasonable doubt," Daniel said, wiping away tears. "Especially if we had all that evidence, and another person's fingerprints was on it, or if someone else's skin was underneath Twila Busby's fingernails. That's reasonable doubt that it could be somebody else."
Douglas Keene, a jury expert and president of Keene Trial Consulting in Austin, said it is "not at all common" for jurors to question their original verdict. "Over time, they become more cemented into that original view because they can't even tolerate the view that they might have made a mistake on something so serious," he said.
Keene emphasized that jurors might feel anxiety that they may have come to the wrong conclusion, regardless of whether it was their fault. "Even if they didn't have an opportunity to know the exculpating evidence, jurors could become distraught that a man's life might have been taken in error."
But in Skinner's case, information suppressed during the trial and developed over the last 15 years has caused five jurors to contemplate their guilty vote in light of the high stakes Keene described. With someone's life on the line, Keene said, jurors take the burden of their responsibility very seriously.
In worn-in jeans and a T-shirt, juror Jerry Williams perched on a stool in his garage. He wonders now if DNA results could put the case to rest.
"What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong," Williams said. "It should have been tested before. ... Somebody's life is at stake."
Meanwhile, Hank Skinner remains on Texas' death row, within 47 minutes of execution on March 24 until the Supreme Court issued a stay. He has maintained his innocence since the night in 1993 that Twila Busby and her sons were murdered, and hopes the high court will give him the right to prove it.
Filed Under: Crime
Tagged: capital murder, death row, Hank Skinner, Medill Innocence Project, Texas, verdict
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§U.S. Supreme Court Did Not Order Destruction of Hank Skinner's DNA Exoneration Evidence !
by Hillary's Agenda Friday Sep 6th, 2013 4:41 PM
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Frightening that Texas Governor Rick Perry's and State Attorney General Greg Abbott's Demonic posse is still attempting to execute Hank Skinner even after denying him any ability to ever again be capable of properly defending himself without his most crucial DNA exoneration evidence !
Stand down Texas Project
Thursday, 14 June 2012
What's Next in the Hank Skinner DNA Testing
"Evidence Missing in Skinner Case," is Jordan Smith's post in the Austin Chronicle, our independent alt-weekly on the stands today.
Just two weeks after the state announced it would drop its opposition to the post-conviction DNA testing of evidence in the capital murder case that sent Hank Skinner to death row, comes news that at least one piece of evidence Skinner has been seeking access to for testing has been lost. Among the key pieces of evidence never before tested, and that Skinner has sought access to for more than a decade, is a blood- and sweat-stained windbreaker found near the body of his girlfriend Twila Busby. The windbreaker is now apparently missing. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement that finally secures DNA testing in this case, but there remains reason for grave concern," Skinner's attorney Rob Owen said in a press statement. "According to the State, every other piece of evidence in this case has been preserved. It is difficult to understand how the State has managed to maintain custody of items as small as fingernail clippings, while apparently losing something as large as a man's windbreaker. To date, the State has offered no explanation for its failure to safeguard the evidence in this case."
Indeed, in addition to 40 items of evidence that have never before been tested for DNA is the windbreaker found next to the body of Busby, who was slaughtered along with her two sons, in the Pampa home she shared with Skinner. There are photos of the windbreaker, a tan jacket with snap buttons down the front, but the windbreaker itself has disappeared – and no one seems to know how or when it was misplaced, or where it might've gone. The Gray County Sheriff's Office says it has never had custody of the jacket; Gary Noblett, from the Pampa Police Department, a 41-year law enforcement veteran who now manages the department's evidence, says that everything the Pampa PD had stored as evidence in the case was eventually transported for Skinner's original trial. After Skinner was convicted the evidence was moved back to Gray County, he said, but "somehow or another" the windbreaker never made it back. He says the PD has fielded questions about the missing windbreaker for three or four years – at some point including questions from the AG's office – but "as far as I know, no one's ever been able to find that thing."
And:
All evidence is to be transported to the Texas Department of Public Safety lab in Lubbock, where it will be inspected by lawyers for both parties before any testing begins. Any unknown DNA profile found as a result of the testing will be run through state and national databases, if possible, and followed by the issuance of a report by DPS documenting the test results and DNA comparisons. Forty-five days after all of the data has been reported to the parties a hearing on the matter will be held in Gray County.
Earlier coverage of Hank Skinner and the Joint Motion for DNA testing in his case begins at the link.
Thursday, 14 June 2012 at 10:23 AM in Crime Lab, DNA, Innocence, Post-Conviction Review, Specific Case, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals | Permalink
Technorati Tags: 31st District Court, capital punishment, Capital Punishment Center, CCA, Chapter 64, Court of Criminal Appeals, crime lab, death penalty, DNA, DPS, GeneScreen/Orchid Cellmark, Gray County, Gray County, Hank Skinner, innocence, post-conviction access to DNA testing, post-conviction review, Rob Owen, Skinner v. Switzer, stay of execution, Texas, Texas Attorney General, Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Solicitor General, University of Texas School of Law
§Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott Has Persecuted Hank Skinner like China Does Falun Gong
by Hillary's Agenda* Tuesday Sep 10th, 2013 6:53 PM
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Calling All Inter+National Anonymous Members>Texas Greg Abbott Thinks Our USA is China !
U.S. Supreme Court Did Not Order Greg Abbott's Demonic Texas Posse To Destroy Hank Skinner's Crucial DNA Exoneration Evidence ?
Allowing Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to Execute Hank Skinner after defying our countries U.S. Supreme Court order to test all of Hank Skinner's DNA legal case evidence,is a Demonic Horror that will have future national legal repercussions!
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's misdirected anger is costing the State of Texas & Uncle Sam tens of million$ in various legal issue$ other than his unbalanced hatred towards a likely innocent>& persecuted man named Hank Skinner..