In 1991, Brent Brewer was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing Robert Laminack during a robbery. Sixteen years later, the Supreme Court vacated his sentence, finding that jurors had not been allowed to adequately consider evidence of Brewer’s abusive childhood and his mental health and addiction struggles.
This is what happened to Douglas. “Because of a deeply misleading aspect of Texas law, we were not told that if any one juror voted for life, that would be Brent’s sentence,” she wrote. “The way the jury instructions read, it seemed like at least 10 people had to agree on a life sentence.” At his first trial, the state called forensic psychiatrist Richard Coons, who, despite never meeting Brewer, predicted that he would likely join a gang in prison and present a long-term danger to society. Brewer was convicted and sentenced to death.
The state has not used Coons as an expert for predicting future dangerousness since that opinion, according to Brewer’s commutation application. But Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals held that Brewer’s lawyers had not properly objected to the issue during the resentencing hearing and blocked him from litigating it on appeal. Brewer filedlast week asking the court to stay his execution to allow for the consideration of evidence that his death sentence was the result of false testimony by Coons.
The narrative for people on death row, Brewer said in a video recently recorded by his legal team, “is that we’re not fixable, we’re not teachable, that we’re, legally speaking, we’re throwaways.” Participating in the faith-based program has given him a sense of purpose, he said.
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