Thread by @bestoneTX

I'm free now to report that I was a historical consultant on this case.

I haven’t posted about this before because I was waiting for the process to play out. But now that the judge has ruled, I'd like to describe my experience.

nytimes.com/2021/10/13/us/…

It’s rare, perhaps, that a historian’s expertise can be put to such good use as this. I study a niche area, a subfield of a subfield, and I teach at a midsized community college.

I never expected to be asked to consult on something so important.

I’m a historian of the Texas Jewish community. My book, “The Chosen Folks,” is the first narrative history of this community. I've also edited a Texas-based historical memoir and published a ton of articles and reviews in the field.

utpress.utexas.edu/books/stocho

In April 2019, I was contacted by the federal public defender’s office in Austin and asked if I could write a narrative in support of their plea to stay Randy Halprin’s scheduled execution. My work would be submitted as an exhibit in their case.

Halprin was part of a group of convicts that escaped from prison and were subsequently involved in a robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer.

Halprin was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 in a trial overseen by Dallas district judge Vickers Cunningham.

But after the conviction, witnesses came forward to report they'd heard Cunnningham refer to Halprin, who is Jewish, with anti-Semitic slurs.

These comments were made outside the courtroom, but some were made while the trial was underway.

Cunningham reportedly described Halprin as “the Jew,” “goddamn kike,” "Jewboy," “filthy Jew,” and “fucking Jew.”

Details on those allegations are included here:
texastribune.org/2019/09/06/ran…

Witnesses also testified that Cunningham, during his time on the bench, made disparaging personal comments about many other defendants in his courtroom, including profane remarks directed at people of various ethnic backgrounds.

Yes, including that one. And that one too.

Halprin’s attorneys asked me to explain the historical origins of those anti-Jewish expressions, to confirm that they are, in fact, disparaging. They wanted to show that Cunningham could not have used these terms obliviously, but they reveal substantial bias toward the defendant.

They also asked for a historical overview of anti-Semitism in Dallas, where the original trial occurred. The idea was to show that Cunningham’s statements were beyond the pale of acceptable public speech in Dallas and that they arose from a documented subculture of bigotry.

They asked me how long I'd need for the work. I said two months. They said no, they needed it in a week.

I researched and wrote a 15,000-word historical report in six days (between final exams). We cut it down to half that length so as not to annoy the judge.

I wrote about disparagement of 19th-century Jewish retailers and about the 1920s Klan, whose rhetoric Cunningham’s closely resembled. I wrote about country club discrimination and about a notoriously anti-Semitic SMU professor during the Cold War.

I wrote about the freely racist segregationist minister W. A. Criswell (who was Cunningham’s pastor at Dallas's First Baptist Church), about Nazi-themed vandalism at synagogues and Jewish homes during the civil rights era, and about skinhead violence in the 1980s.

From my report:

"Any public, open use of such terms [as ascribed to Cunningham] warrants the suspicion that the speaker is unconcerned about giving offense, wishes to give offense, or is too undisciplined in their speech and thought to avoid giving offense."

If anyone is interested, I put a copy of the report on my website. This is the final version that was submitted to the judge as an exhibit in Halprin's plea for a stay of execution.

bryanedwardstone.com/files/

Halprin's request for a stay of execution was granted in October 2019.

It’s just one document among many, but my work, especially the background on anti-Semitic slurs, was cited extensively by Halprin’s legal team.

Here’s that plea (pdf): tinyurl.com/d43ev79w

The case was sent to Dallas Judge Lela Lawrence Mays to decide if the allegations against Cunningham warranted granting Halprin a new trial.

Judge Mays recommended last week that Halprin should be retried. Her ruling also cites details from my research.

dallasnews.com/news/courts/20…

From Judge Mays’s ruling:

“Judge Cunningham harbored actual, subjective bias against Halprin because Halprin is a Jew, and Judge Cunningham's anti-Semitic prejudices created an objectively intolerable risk of bias.”

Judge Mays's ruling: tinyurl.com/3aszesak

Credit for this win belongs entirely to the lawyers and to the many—very courageous—witnesses.

The witnesses included Cunningham's associates, friends, and family members. I'm in awe of their willingness to come forward as they did and to testify to what they knew about him.

By contrast, my role was VERY slight. But as small as it was, I’m extremely proud and gratified to have contributed in some small way to getting an unfairly convicted man off death row.

I don’t relate all this to brag (well, maybe a little), but as a reminder to historians who worry their research may not matter in the “real world.”

Whatever your field, however narrow or niche, it matters in ways you may not realize to people you may not think you will reach.