What could be worse than a capital murder trial in which the trial judge and the prosecutor are having a secret love affair and, working in tandem, cause a defendant to be found guilty of murder and face execution? That incredible scenario happened to Charles Hood. On trial for murder in a Texas courtroom, Hood claimed — correctly as it turns out — that the judge and the prosecutor were having a sexual relationship during his trial and that his right to a fair trial was thereby compromised. A lower court agreed to the extent of ordering a hearing, but the highest appeals court in Texas reversed. Why? Because Hood failed to raise the claim in earlier pleadings, as he could not substantiate the “rumors” of the affair with sufficient proof and, therefore, according to the Texas appellate court, was procedurally barred from raising the claim now. The Texas prosecutor hailed the decision “as a significant procedural victory.”
Interestingly, the prosecutor did not say that the defendant’s allegation lacked merit because the prosecutor knew otherwise. Indeed, the judge and the trial prosecutor — a different prosecutor from the appeals prosecutor — acknowledged the love affair in sworn depositions taken after Hood’s trial. Nor did the prosecutor say that justice was served, which is the legal and ethical mandate of every prosecutor. The prosecutor could not say this, of course, because Hood’s right to a fair trial was almost certainly prejudiced by the affair, and the pursuit of justice, at the very least, should have informed the prosecutor that a hearing was necessary, as the lower court had ordered. Nor did the prosecutor appear to be troubled by the fact that the trial judge was later elevated to the same appeals court, and she sat with many of the same judges who denied Hood the opportunity to prove his innocence.
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