Alma Lagarda, Reprieve Fellow 2006 - 7
 Alma Lagarda graduated from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, where she was a member of Boalt Hall's Death Penalty Clinic and served as co-editor in chief of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. In the summer of 2003, Alma interned at Texas Defender Service through the University of San Fransisco's Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project, where her work included developing mitigating evidence on behalf of prisoners with mental disabilities. Alma is using her two year Fellowship at Texas Defender Service to stem executions in Texas by screening new arrivals on death row in order to identify cases with winnable issues and to provide assistance to appointed lawyers in state habeas appeals. Alma's work focuses on the most critical stage of the judicial process: the point at which evidence must be developed and presented in order to preserve the right to post-conviction review. Alma’s project is serving the approximately 20 - 30 men and women who arrive on Texas' death row each year. Alma is also preparing materials for use in public education campaigns to raise awareness of the deficiencies that plague Texas' capital punishment system.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Texas Defender Service through Reprieve’s fellowship program. In a state that accounts for more than one-third of nationwide executions since 1976 and lacks a statewide office for indigent post-conviction defense, the need for resources is critical. As a Reprieve fellow, I quickly learned that the lack of statewide resources in Texas has dire consequences: prisoners with potentially meritorious claims—from juror misconduct or suppression of evidence, to mental retardation and actual innocence—may nonetheless face execution despite receiving no meaningful review by appellate courts.
One example is the case of Charles Anthony Nealy. Mr. Nealy was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1998. Months before Mr. Nealy’s scheduled execution in 2007, TDS intervened and discovered that Mr. Nealy had an IQ score that raised a serious question of mental retardation. We gathered further evidence suggesting that, from a young age, Mr. Nealy exhibited adaptive deficits consistent with mental retardation. We petitioned the Court of Criminal Appeals to stay Mr. Nealy’s scheduled execution because it would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against the execution of mentally retarded individuals. The application was denied, and Mr. Nealy was executed on March 20th, 2007.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision against the execution of the mentally retarded in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted relief in a number of cases where mental retardation was at issue. The CCA has granted stays and ordered hearings in cases where the evidence supporting mental retardation was almost identical the evidence we presented in Mr. Nealy’s case. The only difference was that, in Mr. Nealy’s case, his attorney had failed to investigate and raise an Atkins claim in a previous application. The Court of Criminal Appeals held in a similar case that, notwithstanding the absolute nature of the prohibition against executing the mentally retarded, the Texas Legislature may limit any second chance it may afford an applicant to raise it again. Ex parte Blue, 230 S.W.3d 151 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). Despite evidence to suggest that Mr. Nealy might be mentally retarded and thus barred from execution, the Court nonetheless refused to grant a stay of execution because Mr. Nealy’s previous lawyer had not raised the claim at the proper time.
Mr. Nealy’s case illustrates the critical nature of post-conviction proceedings and the need to conduct a through investigation from the time of appointment. The State Habeas Project’s goal is to assist counsel at this critical stage so that potentially meritorious claims are identified, carefully developed, and raised at the proper time. Over the course of two years, we interviewed 17 death row prisoners in Texas. We are providing assistance in three cases where trial counsel failed to conduct a thorough mitigation investigation and present a case for life at trial. We continue to provide ongoing consulting in several other cases on issues such as eyewitness identification, mental retardation, and actual innocence.
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