Paul Colella was sentenced to death for the 1991 killings of two men on South Padre Island.
Colella's attorneys allege he was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct and he received inadequate counsel at trial.
Colella agreed to plead guilty to two counts of murder and accept a 20-year term in exchange for his death sentence.
A Brownsville man got a rare ticket off death row Monday, trading his death sentence for 20 years in prison thanks to a deal struck with prosecutors.
Under the terms of the agreement, Paul Colella, 34, pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and the more serious charge of capital murder was dropped. He accepted the 20-year sentence and agreed not to request an early release, meaning he will be eligible for release in September 2012.
The Colella case frequently has been cited by defense attorneys as emblematic of the problems with capital punishment in Texas.
It involves an indigent defendant who swore he was innocent, a trial judge who refused to provide the most basic aid to the defense, allegations that prosecutors withheld evidence and allowed witnesses to lie, and an appellate attorney who prepared an inadequate brief that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected without even reading because it was filed late.
The plea bargain that finally put an end to the case was negotiated in June just days before a federal judge was to hear evidence on the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance by defense counsel. It was approved by the court Monday.
"You draw whatever conclusions you wish" about the timing of the plea bargain, said Andrew Hammel, one of Colella's current attorneys. "We fully anticipated being able to prove all or most all of those allegations during the hearing."
Cameron County First Assistant District Attorney Karen Betancourt said it was the Texas attorney general's office that conceded in federal court that Colella's trial defense was inadequate.
She referred questions about that decision to the attorney general's office, but a spokesman there was unable to comment on the case Monday.
Betancourt also noted that U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela did not mention prosecutorial misconduct in the 19-page order he wrote overturning Colella's death sentence in June and remanding the case back to Cameron County for a new sentencing hearing.
Betancourt said the plea bargain was the most effective way to settle such an old case.
"It was the passage of time," she said. "The ability to retry a case like that becomes extremely difficult. It's a combination of many things, missing witnesses, difficulty in relocating evidence."
Other capital law experts said the timing and leniency of the plea bargain indicate there were more problems with the case than just hard-to-find witnesses.
"That's a red flag," said University of Houston Law School professor David Dow, who also represents capital defendants on appeal. "I think part of the explanation for the apparent dramatic difference between the sentence he received at trial and the sentence he received now is the state was aware there were major constitutional violations at the time of his trial."
Colella was sentenced to die for the 1991 murders of two men on South Padre Island. Cameron County prosecutors claimed Colella shot the men in a jealous rage because he believed -- wrongly -- that they had raped his wife.
From day one, Colella insisted he was innocent. His claim was supported by a bus station attendant who testified Colella was in Victoria, some 240 miles from the crime scene, around the hour of the murders. Colella was convicted largely on the testimony of a man who knew Colella and said he saw him ambush the men.
Repeatedly during Colella's 1992 trial, defense attorney Abel Limas -- who is now a state district judge in Cameron County -- asked for another lawyer to help with the case. He also asked for an investigator and a social worker or psychologist who could testify on Colella's behalf during the sentencing hearing. The trial judge refused all of the requests.
Further hampering Limas' ability to adequately prepare for the case was the fact that he did not get paid for his work until two years after the trial, when he received $9,000.
"That is just an outrage," said Hammel, co-director of the University of Texas Capital Punishment Clinic.
Colella's fortunes did not get much better at the beginning of the appellate process. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected his first appeal, even though two of its members believed that the evidence showed Colella likely was innocent.
Then, the attorney appointed to represent Colella on his second round of appeals -- a complicated area of constitutional law known as the writ of habeas corpus -- filed just a nine-page brief on Colella's behalf. The lawyer also filed it late, and the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected it without even reading it.
Such briefs typically are hundreds of pages in capital cases. The supplemental brief filed in federal court that won Colella the new sentence ran 212 pages and contained more than 1,000 pages of supporting exhibits. The brief was prepared by Hammel; Susan Karamanian, an associate dean of comparative legal studies at George Washington University Law School; and Mike Powell, a partner with Locke, Liddell & Sapp in Dallas.
"We were the first to do any investigation" in this case, Hammel said.
Among the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct raised in the most recent court filing is a charge that prosecutors failed to turn over to the defense the original death certificate, which placed the time of death at about 6 a.m., when Colella was in Victoria. At trial, prosecutors presented witnesses who testified the time of death was much earlier in the morning, giving Colella time to commit the crime and make the 240-mile drive.
In Colella's most recent appeal, defense attorneys included affidavits from two jurors, one who said he would not have voted to convict had he been aware of the evidence, and another who said she would have voted against the death penalty, Hammel said.
It has become unusual for someone to be released from Texas' death row by any means other than execution.
Between 1974 and 1993, 179 people were taken off death row, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records. The vast majority of those had their sentences reduced or their convictions overturned. But in the last 10 years, only 13 people have had their sentences reduced.
The last was David D. Ovalle of Navarro County, whose sentence was reduced from death to life in prison three years ago because the trial judge told the jury it could not consider trial evidence when contemplating a sentence.
Hammel said the reluctance of the Court of Criminal Appeals and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to side with defendants in capital cases prompted him to advise Colella to take the plea bargain.
"You have to take the reality of the system into account as an attorney," he said. "If you don't, you are playing with your client's life."
In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed an
interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only.
|
