Dancing the rain away
Fort Worth killer’s attorneys contend low IQ, ‘inhalant abuse’ prove intellectual handicap
Days before he was scheduled for execution, a condemned Tarrant County killer with a low IQ was granted a stay by the state’s highest criminal appeals court, opening the door to investigate claims that he’s too intellectually disabled to be put to death.
Juan Segundo was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday night, in what would have been the state’s eleventh execution this year. The Fort Worth man was sentenced to die in 2005 for the cold case murder of 11-yearold Vanessa Villa, who was slain inside her family’s home while her mother was out doing errands.
But for at least a decade, Segundo’s attorneys have argued that he’s intellectually disabled, with an IQ in the 60s or 70s. For years, those concerns fell on deaf ears, but now, in light of a groundbreaking 2017 Supreme Court decision in a Harris County case, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed Segundo’s date with death.
His attorneys declined to comment.
‘Extensive history’ of issues
At the time of the 1986 slaying, Vanessa lived in a crowded Fort Worth home with her mother, baby brother, aunt and three cousins. One Sunday evening that August, the preteen came home after working at a flea market and got into bed, then fell asleep with her clothes still on her, according to court records.
Later that evening, her mother and aunt left to go buy diapers and run other errands. They were gone for about an hour. When they came back, they found Vanessa still in bed — unconscious and half-naked.
It looked like someone may have broken in through the window, but even with semen collected from the scene, police still didn’t connect it to Segundo.
Without any fruitful DNA hits, the case went cold. But then, Segundo got locked up on another charge and, while he was in prison in Amarillo, the state took a blood sample and entered his DNA into a national database. Five years later, officials going through cold cases decided to enter old evidence into the database — and two days after that it came up as a possible match.
During trial, the jury heard about other suspected slayings. The defense offered testimony about Segundo’s traumatic childhood, including his abusive upbringing when he sometimes had to scavenge for food while his mother disappeared for days on end.
During the punishment phase, the jury heard about his “extensive history of inhalant abuse” and how it may have caused brain dysfunction.
In appeals, his lawyers repeatedly argued that he was too intellectually disabled to execute, that he suffered from bad lawyering and that the trial judge erred in allowing evidence about other offenses. But the courts rejected his claims, and a judge greenlighted an execution date for October 2018.
Then in late September, his legal team filed another appeal, again raising claims of intellectual disability. This time, though, they had a new court decision working in their favor.
‘Nonclinical’ disability tests
Although courts have decided it’s unconstitutional to execute intellectually disabled prisoners, for years the Lone Star State relied on a dated and “nonclinical” test for determining intellectual disability.
Named after plaintiff Jose Briseno, the test relied on seven questions, as outlined in a 2004 ruling that referenced “Of Mice and Men” character Lennie as someone most Texans would agree should be exempt from the death penalty.
But last year, lawyers for Houston-area death row inmate Bobby Moore argued that test was out-ofdate and that their client was intellectually disabled in spite of the state’s determination to the contrary. The nation’s highest court took up the case and invalidated the state’s method of determining intellectual disability.
Though the state set a new standard, the CCA determined that Moore didn’t meet it anyway. He’s still on death row — and trying to get the Supreme Court to take up his case again. But even so, the impact of the Supreme Court ruling in his case has rippled through other court decisions including, most recently, Segundo’s.
“In light of the Moore decision and the facts presented in applicant’s application,” the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals wrote on Friday, “we have determined that applicant’s execution should be stayed pending further order of this Court.”
With Segundo’s execution date off the calendar, another Tarrant County inmate, Kwame Rockwell, is the next prisoner scheduled to die. The Lone Star State has executed 10 men so far in 2018. There are another seven death dates on the calendar in the coming months, including two in 2019.