Whether or not the state of Texas executes Ronald Hamilton could all come down to the fingerprints left more than 15 years ago on a half-empty 40-ounce malt liquor bottle found sitting outside a Houston convenience store. They were the likely fingerprints of a killer – a killer who was not 42-year-old Hamilton, a Harris County court found last week.
Judge DaSean Jones on Wednesday recommended consideration of a new punishment in light of the condemned man’s claims that the state withheld evidence tying the fingerprint to another possible suspect. The case still has to go up to the conservative Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for approval before the local court can move forward, but it’s not often that death row prisoners get this far in their appeals.
Landers Law 