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Michael Graczyk / AP file
Jerry Hartfield, shown Dec. 11 at a prison outside Gatesville, Texas, says he's been wrongly imprisoned for 30 years in the killing of a woman.
GATESVILLE, Texas -- Jerry Hartfield was still a young man when an uncle visited him in prison to tell him that his murder conviction had been overturned and he would get a new trial.
Not long afterward, he was moved off of death row.
"A sergeant told me to pack my stuff and I wouldn't return. I've been waiting ever since for that new trial," Hartfield, now 56, said during a recent interview at the prison near Gatesville where he's serving life for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Bay City bus station worker. He says he's innocent.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield's murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 — 11 days after the court's second rejection — then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield's sentence to life in prison.
At that point, with Hartfield off death row and back in the general prison population, the case became dormant.
"Nothing got filed. They had me thinking my case was on appeal for 27 years," said Hartfield, who is described in court documents as an illiterate fifth-grade dropout with an IQ of 51, but who says he has since learned to read and has become a devout Christian.
A federal judge in Houston recently ruled that Hartfield's conviction and sentence ceased to exist when the appeals court overturned them — meaning there was no sentence for White to commute. But Hartfield isn't likely to go free or be retried soon because the state has challenged a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision favorable to Hartfield, arguing he missed a one-year window in which to appeal aspects of his case.
A 5th Circuit panel of the New Orleans court agreed with the district court in an October ruling, but last month it made a rare, formal request to the Texas appeals court asking it to confirm its decades-old decision to overturn Hartfield's conviction.
Hartfield's current attorney, Kenneth R. Hawk II, recently described the case as a "one-in-a-million" situation in which an inmate has been stuck in the prison system for more than three decades because no one seems to know what to do with him.
"When you see it, it's kind of breathtaking," he said. "It was tough story for him so far and it's not over yet. ... The bottom line is the commutation came after a mandate was issued. It wasn't valid and it's time for him to get a new trial."
Several factors appear to have contributed to Hartfield's unusual predicament.
Hartfield said that when his uncle read him the article about his conviction being overturned, he didn't fully grasp the meaning of it. Furthermore, Hartfield's trial lawyers, who worked on his initial appeal, stopped representing him once his death sentence was commuted, said Robert Scardino, who was the lead trial attorney.
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"When governor commuted the sentence, that's when our obligations to Hartfield ended," Scardino said.
Hartfield was 21 in June 1977 when he was convicted of murdering 55-year-old Eunice Lowe, a bus station ticketing agent who was beaten with a pickaxe and robbed. Her car and nearly $3,000 were stolen. Lowe's daughter found her body in a storeroom at the station.
At the time, Hartfield, who grew up in Altus, Okla., had been working on the construction of a nuclear power plant near Bay City, which is about 100 miles southwest of Houston. He was arrested within days in Wichita, Kan., and while being returned to Texas, he made a confession to officers that he calls "a bogus statement they had written against me." That alleged confession was among the key evidence used to convict Hartfield, along with an unused bus ticket found at the crime scene that had his fingerprints on it and testimony from witnesses who said he had talked about needing $3,000.
Scardino said he tried using an insanity defense for Hartfield and that psychiatrists called by the defense described Hartfield as "as crazy a human being as there was."
Virginia Higdon, who lived next door to Lowe and knew her most of her life, told the AP that she spoke to Lowe the day she was killed and her friend complained of about a man who refused to leave the station.
"'I can't get rid of this guy. He's just sitting there eating candy, a bag of candy,'" Higdon said her friend told her. "And it was Jerry Hartfield."
She said it's "absurd" that Hartfield might ever be released or retried.
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Jurors deliberated for 3½ hours before convicting Hartfield of murder and another 20 minutes to decide he should die, Scardino said. He said the jury foreman later told him the jurors were "all farmers and ranchers down here, and when one of our animals goes crazy, we shoot it."
Matagorda County District Attorney Steven Reis said with the appeal still pending, it's premature to discuss a possible retrial of Hartfield. Lowe's killing was particularly bloody and investigators found semen on her body, but Reis declined to say whether there was crime scene evidence from the case that could undergo DNA testing, which wasn't available when Lowe was killed.
Scardino said that if Hartfield's confession, which he believes authorities illegally obtained, is allowed at a retrial, Hartfield risks being sent back to death row.
"You have to think: Why would you undo something like that now when you might be looking at something like the death penalty?" he said.
But in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed executing mentally impaired people, a threshold generally accepted as below the IQ of 70.
Hartfield insists that he's not angry that he's spent nearly all of his entire adult life locked up, and he says he holds no grudges.
"Being a God-fearing person, he doesn't allow me to be bitter," he said. "He allows me to be forgiving. The things that cause damage to other people, including myself, that's something I have to forgive.
"In order to be forgiven, you have to forgive."
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If that is his lawyers belief and the Doctor's diagnosis then maybe it was a good thing he stayed locked up.
Funny how many "Criminally Insane" convicts become suddenly "cured" after being locked up and decide that it isn't much fun being crazy in prison .
So which is it, he didn't do it or he did it but he's crazy so they can't execute him?
He wants the retrial as long as the death penalty is off the table, well to bad.
I think his picture and the State of Texas says it all. He should have gotten a speedy re-trial and either sentanced or let go. This is a joke of a disfunctional "justice" system.
This man has had his constitutional rights trampled by state officials and state attorneys. All who did nothing should be tried and if convicted should serve 30 yrs behind bars as well. Or, the state can opt to pay this man a sum of no less than $10 million per year he has been wrongly incarcerated. With that kind of money, he could hire hit men to take-out these racist jerks that did this to him.
His lawyers tried to use the insanity plea, that doesn't mean he was insane. They were grasping at straws... instead of trying to defend him. I think the jury saw a black man with a low IQ and thought "guilty" and since they thought the crime was so awful, they voted for the death penalty. It is a shame they weren't able to test the semen found, at the crime scene, for DNA; that would have placed him there at the murder scene or cleared him. As for his confession, many people have given false confessions who have average or above average IQs; do you really think police would have had a hard time coercing a confession from someone with an IQ of 51?
Innocent or guilty he was not given due process and this needs to be remedied. We have a LEGAL system, not a justice system; which is why so many guilty walk free, while the innocent languish in prison.
Texas takes federal money to keep him in jail. That is a pitiful state
The wording in this 'article' is ambiguous to the point of my wondering why it was even written. It seems to boil down to a mis-trial on a technicality and prison people looked the other way because of circumstantial evidence of his guilt.
Perhaps modern dna testing and other new techniques can prove one way or the other whether this person needed to sit there or was wrongfully held.
May be time for the innocence project to step in . . .
It appears that our justice system and lawyers let him down after he was railroaded.It is shameful to allow somebody with his mentality level to languish in prison for a crime he did not commit.His lawyer trying for the insanity plea is terrible because a low IQ does not mean that a person is insane.
Typical Texas justice. Ignore what the higher courts say and do what they want. Innocent, I don't know, I'd have to hear the evidence. And I'm not from Texas anymore. Far as I'm concerned, this Comanche, born in Texas but got the hell out as soon as possible, the state can be given back to the Mexicans from which it was stolen. Or back to us Indians from whom the Spaniards stole it.
And cleaning lady, just because someone is granted a new trial doesn't mean innocence. It simply means that something was wrong with the first trial, in this case a juror. In addition, a not guilty verdict doesn't mean innocent, it just means the prosecution didn't prove the case. Witness O.J. Simpson. Probably guilty but the state couldn't prove the case.
Innocent until proven guilty. So yes in theory it should mean innocence. Practically speaking that is rarely the case with our system however.
Following the state of Texas and its court system it seems once labeled as death row material it does not matter if the accused is proved innocent beyond a shadow of doubt the State is hellbent on keeping that person in prison. It seems Texas cannot or will not admit to being wrong. Bush II has the same mentality as proved by his record. Why is it so hard for Texas to admit being wrong, right the wrong and move on? Keeping this man in prison after his conviction was overturned is an abuse of the judicial system by everyone who administers it.
A case like this should be enough for the the DOJ to come in and review the Texas judicial system and possibly take it into receivership. This makes me wonder how many others in their system have been denied justice due to the arrogance of the Texas judicial system. This rises to the level of the governor and Perry should take action on this by absolving this man's situation immediately. I think we know the level of intelligence and ethics of Perry. He should the world his level of mentality.
This must be a minority's worst nightmare: A jury full of Tea Party members.
Way to go Texas! They will make sure you serve your time, it does not matter if you were wrongly convicted. Sad...sad...sad... I'm glad I live a thousand miles away from there.
Test the freakin' semen. Let the man go or find him guilty. Ridiculous.
it's over 30 years old and not preserved. Chances are it had degraded so much it could not be accurately tested.
It truly sounds like from day one that everyone has taken total advantage over this mans very low IQ, from the “confession” on. Did the police pick him because of his lack of intelligence and coerce a confession out of someone too illiterate to understand?!?!?!? With no one to advocate for him he has stayed in prison due to his lack of intelligence to help him self.
Before Hartfield murdered my grandmother, he was seen standing in the yard of my aunt's boyfriend. A deputy took his information at that time. After the murder, that deputy suggested they run a check on him and found he had a criminal record in another state. They went to Kansas and waited on him to arrive. He had stolen my grandmother’s car but ditched it before leaving Texas. He told the police where the car was and they found it where he said it was. His fingerprints were on the stick shift.
After 5 years in prison a person should be either Released or Put to death. Anything else is cruel and unjust. My crazy opinion ..
Political correctness rears its head on everything now. He wasn't convicted on a misunderstanding, he was convicted on the evidence. He did it. Let him rot.
What does political correctness have to do with this? There is evidence that can be tested that could not be tested before. Most of the evidence was based on his confession. Do you know how suggestible someone with an IQ of 51 is? They should test the semen from the scene. Simple, easy, done.
This is not political correctness, it is fair justice, one of the tenets this country is based on.
No, not so simple at all Spokane.
Definitively linking the semen with the alleged perpetrator does not necessarily mean the 'perp' ended the victim's life.
Furthermore, neither does it necessarily mean the semen was discharged from the 'perp's' penis at the scene of the crime.
I'm no lawyer but if unanswered questions remain, how can punishment be justified?
If Robert Scardino is still practicing, he needs to be disbarred and sued into oblivion. He knew as an attorney when the Governor commuted his sentence he had no legal authority to do it, thus he had no legal right to stop representing him. Robert Scardino is the one now that belongs in prison.
Well, his intelligence level would preclude him from most good jobs, but he could still be a republican presidential candidate!
Hey after years of Hot, stinking lonely and dehumanizing treatment with no female sex, alcohol, drugs, pizza, pets, fresh air, hope, sun light, privacy or freedom what do you think is going to be gained ? 5 years max and either Release or Death.
This puts a strong light on the justice system doing business as usual.
We have a legal system in this country,not a justice system for all its citizens..
Read "The Confession" by John Grisham, a fictional story about the Texas justice system, which comes eerily close to what appears to be happening here. A good read.
Great book...Tx is well known for a 19th century legal system..
Seeing stories like these so many times, makes me glad I don't live there.
I'd hazard a guess that his acceptance of a 30 year wait for a retrial he was promised is pretty good evidence of intellectual disability. What's weird is that if he had gotten the retrial he was supposed to, he might have been executed long, long before the Supreme Court banned execution of the mentally disabled.
Something like 25% of actual innocence cases have involved convictions based on confessions.
The headline is so true. US trying to bend over backwards to make non=us born people happy by taking away in God we trust and the Pledge of Allegiance out of our schools and two working parents; no one is home raising their children teaching them morals. If you come here and don't like our ways, then go back home. The Government has caused this, not the NRA or the psycho killers. There is no respect for US citizens even by our own government.
ʇıɯǝ ʍɐɹd
Huh?
time warp!
innocent or not his right to speedy trial was violated
Without ranting about the corruption in the courts across this once great country, how does a person such as this have a 51 IQ and then grow a brain and learn to read. BS story once again and the media covers for the local, state and federal government all of the time concerning who, what, where, when and why in their "news" stories.
It's "Bubba".
His head has got to be pretty screwed up from all those years behind bars. Well, I hope when he gets out, he gets a lot of pussy, and someone gives this man a job. With an I.Q. of 51, if that's true, I hope he never gets anyone pregnant.
You're an idiot!
An IQ of 51 does not mean that you are incapabable of learning. It mostly means that's all you know @ a particular point in life. He may or may not be mentally retarded. But still, stypical of Texas. This is another reason why the Gov. and other republicans want to cede. They do not want anyone telling them what to do, including concvicting someone on false or faulty testimony.
Hmmmm, a white Dr beats his wife to death and serves a lousy 5 years and the parole board is getting ready to let him out, first time up. An uneducated black man, serves 30 years, and who deserves a new trial and is langishing in prison ... hardly seems fair. Even if he is quilty, he has served 30 years while the other committed a murder too and only served 5. What's wrong with that picture? Different states, that's what's wrong with THAT picture. Give the man his new trial already Texas! Shame on you.