A very Texan sex scandal: can an improper extramarital affair derail the execution of Charles Dean Hood?

 Charles Dean Hood, sentenced to death by a Judge who was having an affair with the prosecuting attorney, has been granted a new trial by the US Supreme Court.

Reality, we find on frequent occasions, is stranger than fiction. Often, too, the truly bizarre stories are those involving sex. Bang on trend, the Texas Legal system, not to be outdone by footballers and golfers, has thrown up a sex scandal of its own. And it is a story no self-respecting author would make up, for fear of being abandoned by their readers; an audience must be able to suspend disbelief, yes, but not dispose of it entirely.

In the tale of Charles Dean Hood, all seems to be going as you might expect with the Texas judiciary. We skip to the final word and find the same devastatingly predictable ending: The Judge sentenced him to death.

Except in this story things aren’t quite what they seem. The final sentence reads something like this: The Judge, who was having an affair of an intimate nature with the Prosecuting attorney but never felt the need to tell anyone, sentenced the defendant to death.

As the Independent and the New York Times reported earlier this week, Judge Verla Sue Holland and prosecuting attorney Thomas S. O’Connell Jr. had been sleeping together before the case went to trial.

Delve a little deeper and things take a turn toward the truly unbelievable. In September of last year the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas ruled that Hood should be executed anyway. Their reasoning: he had taken too long to raise the issue of the affair.

Judge Holland said that she would have revealed the affair, deliberately kept secret by both parties, but she had never been asked to do so by the defense. And to top it all off, John Roach the District Attorney in the case, told the appeals court that Hood should not be granted a new trial because “The existence of a prior sexual relationship between a judge and a prosecutor is not cause to absolutely disqualify a judge.”

Charles Hood has had to spend nearly twenty torturous years in prison. It is not before time, then, that the U.S Supreme Court has decided to reverse the CCA ruling and grant him a new trial, a decision just released.

Although one might hope that the facts of this case would be persuasive enough, their ruling was no doubt influenced in part by amicus briefs filed on Thursday in support of Hood, one by 20 Judges and one by 30 legal ethics experts.

As one of the legal ethics experts wrote,

“A judge who has engaged in an intimate, extramarital, sexual relationship with the prosecutor trying a capital murder case before her has a conflict of interest and must recuse herself."

The crucial and tragic difference between this sex scandal, which has received scant press attention, and those splashed across the news daily, is that someone’s life really is on the line. Those in the Texan judiciary, it would appear, are more concerned with protecting the privacy of their judges than ensuring that justice is served.