AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the death sentence of Texas man Clarence Curtis Jordan on April 9, 2026, after nearly four decades without legal representation, according to a report from the Death Penalty Information Center.
The author of the article, Leah Roemer, explained that Jordan had struggled with “hallucinations and intellectual deficits” for most of his life, noting that he tested within the bottom 0.5% of the population in IQ score.
She clarified that an evaluation found his IQ was 56 when he was 15 years old, a number well below the “general benchmark for intellectual disability.”
In 1988, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals deemed him incompetent to be executed, yet for the next four decades, he “languished on death row without an attorney” and was forgotten. The examiner believed he was a “dull, simple, [and] underdeveloped boy” whose deficits may have been caused by “organic brain damage.”
By chance, capital defense attorney Ben Wolff learned about Jordan’s case in 2023 while visiting another death-sentenced client. Wolff told Houston Landing that when he spoke to Jordan to see whether his case had been forgotten, he “made eye contact and stuck out his tongue like he was straining to talk.”
Upon investigation, Wolff identified that Jordan’s appellate lawyer, Mary Moore, had ceased representing him after the court declared him incompetent.
Wolff explained to Houston Landing that he “filed a motion” for Jordan to be appointed counsel and argued that the death sentence was “likely unconstitutional.”
During the 1988 trial, Texas told jurors to consider only the “deliberateness” of the crime and whether the accused posed a danger to society. Yet Jordan was not informed that this framework was later deemed unconstitutional in Penry v. Lynaugh because it “did not account for mitigating evidence,” as he did not have an attorney at the time.
In a petition to the court, Wolff asked to vacate Jordan’s death sentence, arguing that the jury instructions in 1988 restricted jurors from “considering evidence of his mental illness and cognitive deficits.”
Jan Krocker, then a judge on the court, received “incoherent, handwritten letters” from Jordan, prompting him to ask Harris County prosecutors about the case in 2000.
In Wolff’s motion, he noted a memo written by Krocker stating that the case had been thoroughly reviewed and that he declined to appoint Jordan a lawyer.
Similarly, judges reviewed the case in 2000, 2004 and 2017, but neither the court nor state prosecutors deemed it necessary to secure counsel for Jordan.
Wolff reasoned that the evolution of “death penalty jurisprudence” opened new avenues for relief, adding that under Atkins v. Virginia, Jordan’s disability “exempted him from execution.”
Wolff advocated for Jordan, explaining how he “has been intellectually limited since childhood,” and “lost his mind…freedom, and then counsel or access to legal process” by his young adulthood, “all the while he possessed meritorious claims for relief.”
After hearing Wolff’s arguments, the court agreed to reconsider evidence of Jordan’s “cognitive and psychiatric dysfunction,” finding that the 1988 jury lacked an “adequate vehicle” to provide the Eighth Amendment’s required “individualized sentencing determination.”
The delays in Jordan’s case stemmed in part from conflicts between state procedures for “determining insanity” and longstanding legal traditions, as well as the national consensus reflected in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ford v. Wainwright, which barred the execution of people found insane.
Because Jordan’s case was the first reviewed under Ford, the Texas Legislature had “removed a statute” governing execution competency, and a judge created a 90-day evaluation procedure “at a loss for any other alternative.”
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, procedures were not established to identify and reassess competency “for another decade,” long after Jordan’s appointed attorney was gone and the 90-day assessment order had been neglected.
Robin Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, described the case as “stunning and disturbing” and asked how many other prisoners had been “lost and forsaken in the Texas prison system.”
Jordan’s vacated death sentence was welcomed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which also announced it would seek a new punishment proceeding. Jordan will be “resentenced to life and eligible for parole,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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