The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence of 70-year-old Clarence Curtis Jordan, sentenced to death in 1978 but found ineligible for execution because of his intellectual disability. He then languished on death row without a lawyer to represent him for 46 years.
According to Houston Public Media and the Texas Tribune‘s Alex Nguyen, Jordan was not appointed an attorney until 2024, when Harris County, where Jordan was convicted, began addressing an enormous backlog in its criminal courts and discovered Jordan’s case. The TCCA then vacated Jordan’s death sentence and sent his case back to Harris County for “a new punishment proceeding.”
Jordan’s new attorney, Ben Wolff, told the paper the case is evidence of “a troubling truth” that those most in need of help in the criminal justice system are often “forgotten or cast aside.”
The Tribune reports that, according to Wolff, Jordan’s only option now is to be resentenced to life with the possibility of parole.