HOUSTON — A man who remains in a Texas prison more than 30 years after his murder conviction was overturned has become the subject of a fight between the state, which insists he’s being legally held, and a federal appeals court that says he’s wrongly imprisoned.
Jerry Hartfield, whose conviction was overturned in 1983, maintains his constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated after the state failed to retry him but also didn’t set him free.
A federal appeals court has agreed with him, but he’s unlikely to receive a new trial soon after the same court, in a spat with the state attorney general’s office, sent his case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday with a request that it define the status of its ruling overturning Hartfield’s conviction.
If the Texas appeals court accepts the federal appeals court’s request, it could set off a new series of legal proceedings that ties up the attorney general’s office and drags out the case.
Hartfield’s federal public defender, Kenneth R. Hawk II, said his client has been “stuck” in the Texas prison system for more than three decades because no one seems to know what to do with his case.
“It’s one of those one-in-a-million deals,” Hawk said. “When you see it, it’s kind of breathtaking.”
Hartfield, now 56, was 21 when he was convicted in the 1976 slaying of a 55-year-old ticket agent at a bus station in Bay City.
Eunice Job Lowe was beaten with a pickaxe and her body left in a bus station storeroom, where her 19-year-old daughter found it.
Texas Inmate Waits Almost 30 Years For Retrial After Murder Conviction Overturned [continued]
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