The longest-serving death row inmate in Harris County will have legal representation for the first time in 36 years.
After being found guilty of killing Houston grocery store owner Joe L. Williams in 1978, 68-year-old Clarence Curtis Jordan has been serving a death sentence. Judge Katherine N. Thomas of the Harris County District Court issued a motion on Monday designating Ben Wolff, the director of the Texas Office of Forensic and Capital Writs, as Jordan’s attorney.
Jordan’s execution sentence is probably unlawful, according to Wolff, whose agency defends death row inmates in post-conviction legal proceedings. Wolff submitted an application to be appointed counsel for Jordan last Tuesday.
According to Wolff, the appointment of counsel is necessary for the sake of justice.
Wolff claimed that after defending Syed Rabbani, whose death sentence was declared unlawful last year, he developed an interest in Jordan’s case. While his successful appeal sat in Harris County courts, Rabbani, who suffers from severe mental illness, languished on death row for decades.
In an interview with the Houston Landing, Wolff stated, “After Mr. Rabbani, I felt compelled to make sure that there were no other people in this situation, and Mr. Jordan’s (case) is almost exactly like Mr. Rabbani.”
Jordan is also mentally ill and was found incompetent to be executed in 1988, albeit he does not currently have an appeal pending. In his motion, Wolff stated that this was the final time he would have legal representation.
The Harris County prosecutor, whose office handled Rabbani’s appeal, was also interested in Jordan’s case.
According to Josh Reiss, head of the district attorney’s Post-Conviction Writs Division, Mr. Rabbani’s case opened my eyes. The cracks allowed it to go in. I asked Ben to look at this in light of that.
By the time Reiss took over the Post-Conviction Writs Division in January 2017, Wolff had already begun his inquiry into Jordan.
Reiss said he had an ethical duty to do justice in this case, but he cautioned that he does not yet know if Jordan’s case similarly fell between the gaps.
According to Wolff, his ultimate purpose is to enhance Jordan’s quality of life, with the potential goal of transferring him to hospice care in the event that his death sentence is overturned.
Mr. Jordan stated that the conditions of his detention are important to him, even if he passes away while there.
An eye-opening case
Wolff claimed to have first encountered Jordan in late 2023 when he was being treated for the incapacitating symptoms of a stroke in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Estelle Unit, a maximum-security hospital wing.
He made eye contact and stretched out his tongue as if he was struggling to speak when I asked him certain questions, but Wolff said that he was unable to do so. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do for him after that day.
After Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that Jordan was incompetent, his appellate attorney, Mary Moore, had stopped representing him, according to Wolff’s subsequent examination into his legal background. That was back in 1988. In his request, Wolff contended that since then, the law surrounding the death sentence has changed, providing Jordan with new options for relief that he was unable to explore on his own due to his mental illness while he was still on death row.
Several efforts for response from Moore were not answered.
Jordan’s scribbled, incoherent letters to his Harris County trial court seem to have inspired Jan Krocker, the court’s then-judge, to ask Harris County prosecutors about the matter in 2000. Later, Krocker refused to hire a lawyer for Jordan.
In a memo attached to Wolff’s motion, Krocker stated that the case was thoroughly examined in the 1980s. There doesn’t seem to be any justification for hiring a lawyer right now.
In 2004 and 2017, Krocker also asked prosecutors about the case’s progress regarding Wolff’s motion claims; however, neither the judge nor the prosecutors ever determined that Jordan need legal representation.
Several inquiries for comment from Krocker were not answered.
Legal professionals who looked over Wolff’s move described Jordan’s case as appalling.
Executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center Robin Maher remarked, “This is another stunning and disturbing case of an extremely vulnerable prisoner who was abandoned by the courts and left to die.” It’s natural to question how many more people were abandoned and lost in the Texas prison system, much like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Rabbani.
Only around a dozen, including one in Texas, have survived longer than Jordan out of the roughly 2,200 state death row inmates across the country, according to Maher.
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