Hank Skinner

Henry Watkins Skinner was an American death row inmate in Texas. In 1995, he was convicted of bludgeoning to death his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and stabbing to death her two adult sons, Randy Busby and Elwin Caler. On March 24, 2010, twenty minutes before his scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution to consider the question of whether Skinner could request testing of DNA his attorney chose not to have tested at his original trial in 1994. A third execution date for November 9, 2011, was also ultimately stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on November 7, 2011.
On March 6, 2011, the Supreme Court issued an opinion holding that Skinner could sue under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that Texas' rules for seeking post-conviction DNA testing upon which the judges relied were too narrow or restrictive. The ruling did not specifically grant Skinner the DNA testing he had been seeking, but on June 1, 2012, the Texas attorney general's office finally agreed to the analysis of the evidence required by the defense.
On November 14, 2012, the Texas Attorney General's office released an advisory to the Gray County state district court that convicted Skinner advising the court that the DNA testing further implicated Skinner in the Busby family murders. Among the findings: Skinner's blood was found in numerous places in the back bedroom where Busby's two sons were murdered. Skinner's DNA was also found on the handle of a bloody knife, but along with DNA from one of the sons and an "unknown contributor". Skinner's attorney, Rob Owen, requested additional DNA testing to identify DNA from an "unknown contributor" on the knife and in the back bedroom. Additionally, the state lost a bloody jacket found under Twila Busby's arm which Skinner claimed belonged to her uncle, Robert Donnell, a convicted felon and accused molester of Twila - Skinner claimed that Donnell was the real killer.
On August 29, 2013, a private Virginia laboratory published the results of tests conducted on four hairs found in the hand of the slain woman, Twila Busby – and three of them showed a family link with the three victims, but did not belong to them, with only one of them belonging to Skinner. These results could incriminate Robert Donnell, a deceased maternal uncle, who Twila Busby had told friends had molested her on multiple occasions and who had threatened her shortly before the murders.
On February 3 and 4, 2014 an evidentiary hearing took place in Pampa, Texas. "Prosecutors argued that the tests only confirmed Skinner's guilt, while lawyers for the 51-year-old defendant said the results raised enough questions about the identity of the perpetrator that a jury would not have condemned him to death."
In July 2014, Judge Steven Emmert issued a ruling saying that "it was 'reasonably probable' Skinner would have still been convicted of a triple murder even if recently conducted DNA evidence had been available at his 1995 trial". The Attorneys for Skinner said they would appeal the decision to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Skinner was scheduled to be executed on September 13, 2023, his sixth scheduled execution date. However, he died in February of that year.

Circumstances surrounding the murders

The murders occurred on December 31, 1993, at 804 East Campbell Avenue in Pampa, Texas. Skinner was convicted of the murders on March 18, 1995, and sentenced to death.
Skinner lived with the victims and admitted that he was in the home when the murders took place, but claimed he was in a comatose condition from a near lethal dose of codeine and alcohol. In a letter published in April 2010, Skinner put forth a new claim that he was colorblind and accidentally ingested the near-lethal mix because he had confused the victim's "fuchsia pink" glass with his own "baby blue" glass. Twila Busby was murdered in the living room just feet from the couch where Skinner claims he was lying passed out on a sofa.
After the murders, Skinner claimed he was roused off the couch by one of the mortally wounded victims – Elwin "Scooter" Caler. Caler died on the porch of a neighbor of Twila Busby. Skinner made his way to the home of Andrea Joyce Reed, four blocks away, and she let him in. Reed initially testified that Skinner threatened her if she called the police. Later, however, Reed recanted that claim and said Skinner merely "told" her not to call the police – never actually threatening her.
Skinner was arrested several hours later, being found in the darkened front bedroom of Reed's home. When he was arrested, Skinner was wearing clothes bearing blood spatters that were DNA-matched to two of the victims.

Postponed execution and campaign for DNA testing

Despite pending litigation, Skinner was given an execution date for November 9, 2011. Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer had written, in a brief to the court filed on June 2, 2011, that "Texas satisfied all the requirements of constitutional due process when it offered Skinner the opportunity to test the DNA evidence at trial."
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a civil suit against Switzer, over post-conviction DNA testing, could proceed – but did not rule on whether Skinner should be given access to the actual evidence.

A new Texan law, SB 122, took effect on September 1, 2011. SB 122 intends to ensure that procedural barriers do not prevent prisoners from testing biological evidence that was not previously tested or could be subjected to newer testing. On September 6, 2011, Skinner's attorneys filed a motion in state district court in Gray County, Texas, to compel DNA testing of key pieces of evidence that have never been tested. However, on November 2, 2011, Judge Steven R. Emmert of the district court of Gray County denied the third motion of DNA testing introduced by the defense, without explaining his decision.
On November 7, 2011, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Skinner's most recent execution so that a determination could be made about whether Texas law allowed for DNA evidence from the crime scene to be tested.
On June 1, 2012, one month after an oral argument at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the Texas attorney general's office said it no longer opposed a death row inmate's request for DNA testing his attorneys said could prove his innocence.
In November 2012, a further analysis of DNA evidence found Skinner's blood on numerous objects and furniture in the back bedroom where Busby's sons were murdered. It also found Skinner's DNA, along with that of Caler and an unidentified third contributor on the handle of a knife found on the front porch.

U.S. Supreme Court issues

March 2011 ruling

On July 22, 2010, Skinner's lawyer presented his brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. In it, he asked one question: "may a convicted prisoner seeking access to biological evidence for DNA testing assert that claim in a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, or is such a claim cognizable only in a petition for writ of habeas corpus?"
Skinner's lawyer's brief also noted: "Mr. Skinner's suit for access to DNA evidence does not challenge the validity of his underlying conviction or sentence."
Skinner's petition was heard by the Supreme Court on October 13, 2010, at 10:00. The oral argument was widely covered by, among other media, the Washington Post.
On March 7, 2011, the decision of the Supreme Court agreed that the civil rights action was appropriate in this case.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that a Section 1983 suit was available in cases where the relief sought by the inmate would

not "necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence." Since there was no telling whether the results of the tests Mr. Skinner sought would establish his guilt, clear him or be inconclusive, she wrote, the suit was proper.

Skinner echoed this strategy to a CNN reporter: "all the District Attorney's gotta do is turn over the evidence, test it and let the chips fall where they may. If I'm innocent, I go home, if I'm guilty I die..."

Issues and claims surrounding the case

Background

On March 24, 2010, thirty-five minutes before the scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Skinner a stay of execution to allow time to consider his petition for writ of certiorari.
On May 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would review Skinner's case. The justices agreed to grant full review of the issue his lawyers raised: whether prisoners can use a federal civil-rights law to request DNA testing after their convictions.
At issue was whether post-conviction DNA testing is a civil right even though the DNA, in this case, was available at trial but Harold Comer, the appointed attorney of Skinner at trial, chose not to have it tested at the time because he believed it could be damaging to the case. Comer later stated that, although he stood by his trial strategy, he would now request the testing. According to Professor David Protess, "Comer failed to request DNA testing, or present compelling evidence about the alternative suspect. And, at the sentencing hearing, he failed to object to using Skinner's prior convictions – which he had prosecuted – to justify the death penalty.".
Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer responded to the Supreme Court's decision to hear Skinner's case in a letter to an Amarillo News Station. Switzer accused Skinner of "gaming the system" and said that, on two previous appeals, Skinner had failed to show how additional testing could exonerate him. Switzer's position was based on the decisions of The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which had written, "The Appellant's request to compare fingerprint evidence would not provide a reasonable probability of the Appellant's innocence, but instead would only demonstrate the presence of a third party." So the position of the Texas authorities was that the existence of a third party, being not an actual proof of innocence, was not a point to investigate.