Texas court overturns sentence for man on death row for nearly 50 years

Clarence Curtis Jordan was convicted in 1978 but hadn’t had a lawyer for over 30 years The Texas court of criminal appeals has overturned the death sentence of Clarence Curtis Jordan, a 70-year-old man with intellectual disabilities, who spent nearly 50 years on death row – much of that time without a lawyer. Jordan was convicted in 1978 for the murder of Joe L Williams, a 40-year-old grocer in Houston, and was sentenced to death. In the years that followed, courts determined that Jordan, who...

By Anna Betts