Court accused of flouting justices’ order
Judges reject evidence of childhood neglect is compelling enough to avoid death penalty
WASHINGTON — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected criticism from the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the state’s highest criminal court “may have failed” to consider crucial information before upholding a Houston man’s 2012 death sentence.
Now Terence Tremaine Andrus, who says his defense attorney’s shoddy work undermined his case, is asking the Supreme Court to intervene for a second time.
The Supreme Court last year ruled that a “tidal wave” of evidence about Andrus’ past — revealing “a childhood marked by extreme neglect and privation, a family environment filled with violence and abuse” — raises significant questions about whether the jury that found him to be a danger to society in 2012 might have had second thoughts before sentencing him to death.
Little of that evidence was presented at Andrus’ trial, during which, the justices said, his defense attorney called witnesses who “may have unwittingly aided” the prosecution, such as his mother, who “sketched a portrait of a tranquil upbringing, during which Andrus got himself into trouble despite his family’s best efforts.”
The Supreme Court ruling noted that Andrus’ defense attorney, James “Sid” Crowley, “acknowledged that he did not look into or present the myriad tragic circumstances that marked Andrus’ life,” which may have helped him avoid the death penalty in the 2008 fatal shootings of two Sugar Land residents in a Kroger parking lot.
But on its second look, the criminal appeals court disagreed, writing in a 5-4 ruling in May that the evidence in Andrus’ favor was “not particularly compelling” and that much of it was “doubleedged.” The evidence against Andrus, the state court ruled, “was strong and substantial, and notably, extensive with respect to violence during incarceration.”
Andrus’ attorneys say the state appeals court is flouting the Supreme Court’s order and violating Andrus’ Sixth Amendment right to a competent defense.
“They didn’t do as instructed by the high court and they don’t really have the right to do that under our constitutional system,” said defense attorney Gretchen Sween. “Beyond Terrance and his right to have a fair trial represented by constitutionally effective counsel, there’s this bigger issue, which is when the high court tells you to do something, you’ve got to do it or it destabilizes the rule of law for everyone in every case.”
Attorneys for the state of Texas say the appeals court did exactly as it was told — it just didn’t agree with the Supreme Court’s findings. They wrote in a brief defending the Court of Criminal Appeals that the Supreme Court’s order was not a mandate “to find prejudice,” but rather to simply review the case for the possibility of it.
“The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals undertook a record intensive review of (Andrus’) case as it was ordered to by this court,” the state brief says, and the court concluded that Andrus’ trial was not prejudiced “because his proposed mitigating evidence was not uniformly mitigating, but in many places actually aggravating.”
Andrus was sentenced to death in 2012 after he was found guilty of the killings of Avelino Saucedo Diaz and Kim Phuong Bui during an attempted carjacking in a Kroger parking lot.
Andrus, who was 20, admitted to the shootings and later helped police find the murder weapon. But he said he was high on PCPlaced marijuana at the time and was acting in self defense. Andrus said Diaz, whose car he had tried to steal before realizing it was a stick shift, which he couldn’t drive, was trying to pull a pistol on him. Bui was in another car that was accelerating toward him. Andrus said he believed the driver was trying to run him over.
During the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors presented evidence of Andrus’ aggressive behavior in a juvenile detention center and tattoos that suggested gang affiliations. The state said Andrus had hit, kicked and thrown excrement at prison officials while awaiting trial . There was also evidence tying him to an aggravated robbery of a dry-cleaning business.
But Andrus’ defense attorney, Crowley, “failed even to look for” evidence to counter prosecutors’ allegations, the Supreme Court ruled. Crowley died in 2019.
The high court ruling detailed “powerful” and “compelling” evidence Crowley could have presented: Andrus was 6 years old when his mother began selling drugs out of the apartment where he and his four siblings lived. She eventually turned to prostitution to fund a drug addiction, and by the time Andrus was 12, she regularly spent entire weekends, and sometimes weeks, away from her children. Andrus was caring for his siblings by the time he reached adolescence, and had been diagnosed with affective psychosis at the age of 10 or 11, according to the ruling.
When he was 16, Andrus allegedly served as a lookout while his friends robbed a woman and he was sent to a juvenile detention facility where, for 18 months, “he was steeped in gang culture, dosed on high quantities of psychotropic drugs, and frequently relegated to extended stints of solitary confinement,” the ruling says.
“The ordeal left an already traumatized Andrus all but suicidal. Those suicidal urges resurfaced later in Andrus’ adult life,” the Supreme Court ruling said. “During Andrus’ capital trial, however, nearly none of this mitigating evidence reached the jury.”
The state criminal appeals court, on the other hand, called the evidence highlighted by the high court “relatively weak” and argued that some of the details about his family and background were presented at trial.
And the court said evidence of Andrus’ mental health issues “deserves some skepticism.”
“Whatever his mental health issues were, those issues were not so severe or persistent as to keep him from — according to his own testimony — taking care of his siblings,” the court ruled.
The state court also argued that “much of ” the evidence the Supreme Court pointed to could also work against Andrus. The state court pointed to a doctor’s report presented by the state that said Andrus had a history of animal cruelty that included “accidentally” killing a puppy, killing birds and that he “blew up frogs.”