Texas' longest-serving death row inmate could get new shot at fair punishment

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has asked Texas’ highest-ranking criminal judges to consider a new punishment for Raymond George Riles — the state’s longest-serving inmate awaiting execution following the 1974 murder of a Houston man. The former trucker, now 70, has been locked up for more than 40 years. But for decades, Riles — convicted in 1976 of capital murder — has been considered mentally ill and incompetent for execution and no date has recently been set. His lawyers and prosecutors now agree that the Court of Criminal Appeals should let Riles have a second chance at a punishment hearing.

In a brief, District Attorney Kim Ogg outlined her reasoning. Sentencing for capital crimes, she said, have changed since Riles’ conviction. Juries — prompted by the so-called Penry claim set through a U.S. Supreme Court precedent — are now asked to weigh mitigating evidence, such as an offender’s childhood trauma, brain injuries or mental illness, into the punishment. “In 1976, Riles’ capital murder jury was not given this opportunity,” Ogg said in a later statement. Riles, then 24, and an accomplice, Herbert Washington, shot and killed a used car dealer in Houston’s Northside neighborhood. The duo confronted the victim, 31-year-old John Thomas Henry, over the condition of a car and shot him while demanding the money back, authorities said. Riles pocketed $42 from the robbery. Washington, also sentenced to death, had his sentence overturned and he pleaded guilty to two related charges. “Our prosecutors notified the crime victim’s son,” Ogg continued in a statement. “These cases are heartbreaking because the process takes so long that laws can and sometimes do change, and it just prolongs justice and healing for the families of the dead.”