SAN ANTONIO — A Texas appeals court on Wednesday ordered a new trial of a Jewish man on death row — who was part of a gang of inmates who fatally shot a police officer in 2000 after he escaped — citing anti-Semitic bias by the judge who presided over his case .
Attorneys for Randy Halprin have argued that former Dallas Judge Vickers Cunningham used racial slurs and anti-Semitic language to refer to him and some of his co-defendants.
Halprin, 47, was among the group of inmates known as the “Texas 7” who escaped from a South Texas prison in December 2000 and went on to commit numerous robberies, including the one in which they shot 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins . 11 times, killing him.
By a 6-3 vote, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that Halprin’s conviction be overturned and that he be given a new trial after concluding that Cunningham was biased against him at the time of his trial because he is Jewish.
The appeals court ruled that evidence showed Cunningham repeated unsupported anti-Semitic stories during his lifetime. When Cunningham became a judge, he continued to use derogatory language about Jewish people outside the courtroom “with ‘great hatred, (and) disgust’ and increasing intensity as the years passed,” the court said.
It was also said that during Halprin’s trial, Cunningham made offensive anti-Semitic comments outside the courtroom about Halprin in particular and Jews in general.
“The irrefutable evidence supports the finding that Cunningham formed an opinion about Halprin that arose from an extrajudicial factor – Cunningham’s toxic anti-Semitism,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.
The court previously halted Halprin’s execution in 2019.
“Today, the Court of Criminal Appeals took a step toward broader confidence in criminal justice by issuing a hopelessly tainted death sentence handed down by a bigoted and biased judge,” said Tivon Schardl, one of Halprin’s attorneys, in a statement. “It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts.”
The order for a new trial came after Dallas District Judge Lela Mays said in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham was unwilling or unable to curb the influence of his anti-Semitic biases on his judicial decision-making during the trial.
Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs to refer to Halprin and the other escapees.
Cunningham retired from the bench in 2005 and is now an attorney in private practice in Dallas. His office said Wednesday that he would not comment on Halprin’s case.
Cunningham previously denied accusations of bigotry after telling The Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he has a living trust that rewards his children for marrying straight, white Christians. He was against interracial marriage, but later told the newspaper that his views had evolved.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office was appointed to handle legal issues related to Halprin’s allegations after the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.
In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court papers saying Halprin should get a new trial because Cunningham showed “actual bias” against him.
Of the seven prisoners who escaped, one committed suicide before the group was arrested. Four have been executed. Another, Patrick Murphy, is awaiting execution.
