HOUSTON (AP) - A federal appeals court is allowing an inmate who has been on Texas’ death row for nearly 25 years for a double slaying in Houston to move forward with an appeal and has upheld the conviction of another prisoner condemned for the shooting deaths of four people in suburban Dallas in 2004.
In the Houston case involving 52-year-old inmate Rick Allan Rhoades, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to consider whether his trial judge in 1992 was wrong during the sentencing phase to exclude from jurors childhood photos depicting Rhoades in normal, happy activities to show he was nonviolent and would do well in a prison environment. The judge had ruled the photos were irrelevant.
The appeals court also said in its ruling issued late Monday that it will consider arguments on whether jurors were improperly told Rhoades could be released on furlough from a life sentence when actually no Texas convict with a life sentence for capital murder had ever been allowed a furlough.
In addition, the appeals court told attorneys they would look at whether two potential jurors were improperly disqualified because they were black. Rhoades is white but the court said he can raise the issue. His lawyers contend that prosecutors questioned the potential jurors who were black differently.
Rhoades was convicted of fatally stabbing two Houston brothers, Charles Allen, 31, and Bradley Allen, 33, during a robbery at their home. The Sept. 13, 1991, killings occurred one day after Rhoades had been released on parole after serving three years of a five-year burglary sentence.
In the second case, the appeals court rejected claims from 36-year-old Raul Cortez that his lawyers were deficient at his trial for the quadruple fatal shooting in McKinney in 2004.
A three-judge panel of the court last year said it had “considerable doubt” that Cortez’s claim would be successful, but the judges who ruled Monday said if there was doubt in a death penalty case it deserved to be reviewed.
Cortez’s attorneys argued his trial lawyers were deficient for not objecting to numerous instances in which prosecutors referred to inadmissible polygraph evidence. The court said the evidence did not prejudice his case. Lower courts said the defense strategy not to object was reasonable to gain credibility with the jury.
Testimony showed the killings at a McKinney home, which authorities called the worst mass slaying ever in Collin County, were the result of a botched robbery attempt.
Killed were Rosa Barbosa, 46, the manager of a check-cashing business; her nephew, Mark Barbosa, 25; and his friends, Matthew Self, 17, and Austin York, 18.
The case went unsolved for three years until an accomplice acknowledged his participation and implicated Cortez.
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