Texas Tribune
Texas inmate Syed Rabbani taken off death row decades after filing appeal
by Clare Amari, Houston Landing, The Texas Tribune – 2023-11-14 18:42:36
SUMMARY: Syed Rabbani, a Texas death row inmate since 1988 for fatally shooting a Bangladeshi immigrant, had his sentence overturned due to constitutional issues with trial instructions. Diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, Rabbani's appeal, filed in 1994, lay dormant for 30 years until Harris County clerks rediscovered it in 2022. The DA's office acknowledged process failures and dropped the death penalty. Rabbani, now 58, was re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, yet his precarious health and vegetative state prompt calls for his transfer to hospice care and eventual release to his family in Bangladesh.
—————-
FULL ARTICLE:
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Nearly 30 years ago, death row inmate Syed Rabbani filed a legal appeal challenging the constitutionality of his death sentence, which he received in 1988 for the fatal shooting of a fellow Bangladeshi immigrant at a Houston convenience store.
Now, he has been officially re-sentenced, a major victory for an inmate whose attorneys say was “forgotten” for decades by both the courts and the prison system that confined him.
On Tuesday, the Harris County district attorney's office, represented by Post-Conviction Writ Division Chief Joshua Reiss, informed a district court judge at a resentencing hearing that the office would not pursue the death penalty, citing “some very serious mental and physical health issues affecting Mr. Rabbani some three decades after the capital murder.”
“This was a due process disaster,” said Reiss at the hearing. “The ball got dropped (in) numerous places. We need to make sure this doesn't happen again.”
Texas' highest criminal court ruled in favor of Rabbani's long-standing appeal in September, overturning his death sentence as unconstitutional because the judge failed to properly instruct jurors about taking important factors into consideration during the sentencing phase of his trial. Among those factors was potential evidence of mental illness. Since his conviction, Rabbani has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder by doctors at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The reversal in Rabbani's case follows a bizarre series of events in which Rabbani's appeal, first filed in 1994, remained pending for nearly 30 years. The Harris County District Clerk's Office rediscovered the appeal and forwarded it to the Court of Criminal Appeals for review in 2022, one of over 100 similar cases identified by county officials, according to an investigation by the Houston Landing.
“Everybody in this courtroom — we weren't around in 1994,” said Ben Wolff, Rabbani's recently appointed lawyer and director of the state Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, referring to the year Rabbani filed his appeal. “But we all have the opportunity to do something about it.”
Of the defendants in those cases, Rabbani, 58, alone remained on death row as his appeal “gathered dust in the offices of the Harris County District Clerk,” Rabbani's legal team wrote in a letter to the court.
The district attorney's decision to drop the death penalty in Rabbani's case now leaves him serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole, the only other punishment available for capital crimes at the time of his conviction in 1988 for murdering Mohammed Jakir Hasan. Rabbani is now eligible for parole on the basis of time served.
However, Rabbani is seriously mentally ill and also suffers from a variety of other medical issues that have left him in a vegetative state since early 2022 — issues that his legal team says were ignored by Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff for decades, including untreated seizures and possibly diabetes.
Medical records provided by Rabbani's attorneys show that prison staff has repeatedly recommended Rabbani be transferred to hospice since early 2022, but he was deemed ineligible for such a transfer because he was serving a death sentence — the sentence now deemed to be unconstitutional.
Wolff was visibly emotional in court as he described Rabbani's current medical condition and living environment, forced to pause to collect himself.
“He is confined to a prison bed in probably the most disgusting prison circumstance I've ever seen,” he said, referring to Rabbani's cell in the medical wing of the Estelle prison unit. Wolff recalled seeing soiled bed pads on the floor and mold in the toilet when he first visited Rabbani in spring 2023. “Continued confinement for Mr. Rabbani amounts to torture.”
“This case is a stain on the criminal legal system,” Wolff added.
Wolff urged district court Judge Lori Chambers Gray on Tuesday to recommend Rabbani be transferred to hospice, then paroled and released to the care of his family in Bangladesh.
“They welcome the opportunity to, one day, reunite with him,” Wolff and his fellow counsel, Heather Richard, wrote in their letter to the court. “They are aware that Mr. Rabbani has pronounced medical and psychiatric issues, but, if given the chance, they hope to take care of him for the rest of his life.”
In remarks following Wolff's plea, Judge Lori Chambers Gray indicated her openness to recommending hospice. On the subject of parole, she said she would review the full case record, then consider accepting Wolff's recommendation.
Rabbani's siblings lost touch with their loved one following the death of their father in 1995, according to a brother, Syed Fasaini. They connected with Rabbani's legal team earlier this year after reading the Houston Landing's prior coverage of Rabbani online, a circumstance Wolff described in court as “kismet,” or fate.
Fasaini, Rabbani's youngest brother, subsequently wrote to Judge Lori Chambers Gray from West Shikarpur, a small village in Bangladesh. In spare sentences, he described his family's affection for their lost sibling and ended with a promise.
“Dear Honorable Judge,” he wrote. “I shall take care (of) my Brother.”
This article first appeared on Houston Landing and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post Texas inmate Syed Rabbani taken off death row decades after filing appeal appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
These Texans aren’t taking buyouts despite repeated floods
by By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Recent floods in Harris County, Texas, have devastated homes along the San Jacinto River. Tom Madigan, who owns multiple properties, quickly started repairs without knowing the Harris County Flood Control District aims to buy out such flood-prone properties. The region has a longstanding buyout program to remove homes from high-risk flood areas, with about 800 out of 2,400 targeted properties purchased. However, buyouts are voluntary and often insufficient for low-income residents. Despite the program, many choose to stay due to affordability and community ties, while others like Madigan remain skeptical of receiving a fair offer.
—————-
FULL ARTICLE:
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn't think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn't know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan's, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district's buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn't want to sell, the district can't force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can't be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they've stayed because it's affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn't think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn't know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can't wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state's most populous county. For years before Harris County's first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district's property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can't easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
“It's a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don't want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent's house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent's property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It's just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it's now happened to us twice in seven years … It's sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don't see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood's advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn't afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don't have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray's land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I'm coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors' belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn't taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
We've got big things in store for you at The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Join us for three days of big, bold conversations about politics, public policy and the day's news.
The post These Texans aren't taking buyouts despite repeated floods appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Trump, Abbott speak at Dallas NRA convention
by By Annie Xia, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-18 19:24:41
SUMMARY:
—————-
FULL ARTICLE:
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
DALLAS— At the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Saturday, Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged the thousands gathered to vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election as a way to ensure their Second Amendment rights.
“The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning, and with your vote, I will stand strong for your rights and liberties,” Trump said. “I heard it a few weeks ago that if gun owners voted, we would swamp them at levels that nobody's ever seen before. I think you're a rebellious bunch, but let's be rebellious and vote this time.”
Trump and Abbott spoke to a room packed with NRA members, some of which sported supportive attire from the standard-fare red caps to a dress covered with photos of the former president.
During the convention, the NRA released its endorsement for the 45th president, and the Trump political campaign announced the launch for the “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition.
Abbott touted his track record on gun rights by pointing to Texas laws passed last year, such as House Bill 3137 which prohibits local governments from requiring firearm owners to buy liability insurance. To energetic applause, he said the law ensured people would not be forced to pay to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Abbott also described the state's successful crackdown on the recent pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, in which protesters are demanding the schools divest from from companies tied to Israel or weapons manufacturing amid the Israel-Hamas War.
“When they tried to pull that stunt in Texas, our Department of Public Safety cleared the area, arrested the protesters and put them in jail,” Abbott said. “Unlike some of these radical leftist universities like Columbia, UCLA and far too many others, in Texas we don't tolerate paid protesters who tried to hijack our college campuses.”
Almost to the day, the NRA convention takes place two years after the Uvalde school shooting, where an 18-year-old gunned down an elementary school with a legally purchased assault rifle. The shooter killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers with an AR-15 style rifle.
During the 2023 legislative session, Uvalde families unsuccessfully pressed Texas policymakers to pass a raise-the-age law, which would have upped the minimum age for buying semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans made the gun violence epidemic worse, especially in our state, where we have seen nine mass shootings just in the last 15 years,” said a statement by Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party Chair, on Friday. “Even after Uvalde parents pleaded with Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz for commonsense gun safety laws, they decided, like Trump “ that the NRA and gun lobby was more important.”
Instead the legislature approved a school safety bill that established preventative measures toward school shootings. The law included a mandate that every school must hire an armed security officer and the creation of a department within the Texas Education Agency that can compel districts to adhere to active-shooter protocols.
During his speech, Trump endorsed four Republican candidates who are fighting in late May runoffs to be their party's nominee: Alan Schoolcraft, David Covey, Helen Kerwin and Brett Hagenbuch. Each of them has already received endorsements by Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton or both. Schoolcraft, Covey and Kerwin are running against Republican incumbents in the Texas House who impeded Abbott's signature school voucher bill or voted for Paxton's impeachment based on accusations of corruption.
We've got big things in store for you at The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Join us for three days of big, bold conversations about politics, public policy and the day's news.
The post Trump, Abbott speak at Dallas NRA convention appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Photos: Texas storms cause widespread damage in Houston area
by By Marie D. De Jesús and Antranik Tavitian, Houston Landing, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-17 14:45:42
SUMMARY: Severe storms hit the Houston area on Thursday evening, resulting in widespread damage, four fatalities, and power outages affecting nearly 900,000 homes and businesses. The Houston Office of Emergency Management is beginning recovery efforts, while officials discourage unnecessary travel. Reports from Houston Landing detail the extent of the destruction, which includes knocked-down power lines and damaged buildings, such as the Wells Fargo Plaza and the CenterPoint Energy Plaza. Photos provided by Antranik Tavitian and Marie D. De Jesús illustrate the damage seen across the region.
—————-
FULL ARTICLE:
Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Severe storms tore through the Houston area Thursday evening, causing widespread damage, killing at least four people and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power.
Gale force winds up to 100 mph knocked over power lines, blew out windows and toppled trees throughout the region. Houston Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Brent Taylor said officials will begin the recovery process once debris and damage are cleared. In the meantime, Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged residents to avoid all unnecessary travel.
The storm ravaged Harris County — from transmission towers crushed in suburban Cypress to stricken oak trees blockading traffic to high-rise windows shattered throughout downtown Houston.
Here's a look at some of the damage wrought, reported by Houston Landing:
We've got big things in store for you at The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Join us for three days of big, bold conversations about politics, public policy and the day's news.
The post Photos: Texas storms cause widespread damage in Houston area appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
-
Local News5 days ago
Barge Hits Texas Bridge Causing Oil Spill: Everything We Know
-
Texas News5 days ago
Galveston bridge closure: Gulf Intracoastal Waterway closed after barge slammed into Pelican Island bridge, causing oil spill
-
Texas Tribune4 days ago
Hundreds visit South Texas town for annual vegan festival
-
Texas News2 days ago
Cypress tornado damage: Residents in Towne Lake neighborhood react to overnight tornado damage to community
-
Texas News2 days ago
Texas restaurant named one of the most beautiful in the US, according to OpenTable
-
Texas News4 days ago
Daniel Perry case: Gov. Greg Abbott pardons former US Army sergeant convicted of killing veteran Garrett Foster at BLM protest
-
Texas News4 days ago
METRO PD Lt. Tarlesha James charged in incident involving church pastor, her attorney responds
-
Texas News5 days ago
The Mirage casino in Las Vegas is closing – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth