News
Texas Prisoner to be Released After 17 Years on Death Row
Conviction of Ernest Willis Overturned
For further information, please contact:
Athanasia Sfikas (212) 885-0415 or Adam Clampitt (323) 966-5777
Alternatively, please call 866 369-1125 for further information, or to schedule interviews with Ernest Willis or his attorneys.
October 6, 2004, Huntsville, Tx. -- Texas authorities will release Ernest Willis today from Death Row after 17 years, following a federal court decision that Willis, 59, was wrongfully convicted of arson-murder and wrongfully sentenced to death. Willis is the first inmate to be released from Texas' Death Row since 1997, and the eighth inmate overall since Texas re-instituted the death penalty in 1976. The lawyers responsible for winning Willis' release, at Latham & Watkins LLP, have litigated the legal challenges to the conviction and death sentence for over ten years.
Latham & Watkins' pro bono attorneys James Blank, Walter Loughlin, and Noreen Kelly-Najah, and their co-counsel, Robert C. Owen, of Austin Texas, persuaded Judge Royal Furgeson of the federal court in San Antonio that:
- Willis was denied the effective assistance of counsel at the trial and sentencing phases of the case;
- the trial was riddled with other constitutional defects, including the involuntary administration of large doses of anti-psychotic medication to him throughout the trial; and
- Texas authorities suppressed a psychiatric report, procured by prosecutors, that was favorable and material to the death sentence finding.
“This has been a long and difficult road,” said Blank. “We are delighted for Ernest and his wife, and cannot begin to imagine what this new found freedom must feel like.”
Walter Loughlin added, “After 17 years on death row, for a crime he did not commit, it has taken great resolve, mental strength and extraordinary powers of personal conviction on Ernest's part to reach this day. We also cannot say enough about the devotion to law reflected in the decisions of Judge Furgeson and Judge Jones, which were reached after a painstaking review by both judges of a lengthy evidentiary record and scholarly analysis of the relevant legal issues."
“We have been working tirelessly to get the justice that Ernest deserves,” said Kelly-Najah. “Ernest will soon be tasting the freedom that was wrongly taken from him 17 years ago.”
Although Judge Brock Jones of the District Court, Pecos County, Willis' original state court trial judge, who had imposed the death sentence in 1987, became persuaded of the constitutional defects in the conviction and sentence, and recommended to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in June 2000 that it vacate the conviction and sentence, that Court refused to do so.
As a result, Latham & Watkins took the case to the Texas federal courts. On August 4, 2004, Judge Furgeson granted Willis' petition for a writ of habeas corpus, finding that the trial and sentencing were unconstitutional. Judge Furgeson ordered that the “State SHALL GRANT Willis a new trial in the 112th Judicial District Court of Pecos County on or before November 18, 2004 or the State SHALL RELEASE Mr. Willis from custody.”
The Texas State Attorney General's Office declined to appeal Judge Furgeson's order to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 4, 2004, Ori White, the District Attorney for the 112th District, Pecos County, filed a motion to dismiss the 17-year old indictment against Mr. Willis “with prejudice due to insufficient evidence,” and for “Ernest Willis [to] be released without delay.” The State's motion was based on its own independent investigation of the circumstances of the 1986 fire in a house in Iraan, Texas, 225 miles from San Antonio, in which two women perished, that gave rise to Willis' murder conviction. According to the motion, the available evidence (including a newly-commissioned expert's report) indicated that “it is probable Willis did not commit capital murder.”
About Latham & Watkins
Latham & Watkins is a global law firm with more than 1,800 attorneys in 22 offices, including Brussels, Chicago, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New Jersey, New York, Northern Virginia, Orange County, Paris, San Diego, San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. For more information on Latham & Watkins, please visit the Web site at www.lw.com