An Argentine national on death row in Texas was denied U.S. Supreme Court review of his appeal that raised issues of racism and mental health in the criminal justice system.
Victor Saldaño already got his first death sentence thrown out based on racist testimony against him. But he’s challenging his latest sentence because it stemmed from his mental deterioration on death row, which he says he was only on because of the initial racist testimony.
His appeal challenged as too vague in his unique situation the state’s requirement that, for juries to return death sentences, they find defendants pose future danger. With the high court’s denial of Saldaño’s appeal, he’s now one step closer to execution for a 1995 murder.
The Supreme Court sent his case back to Texas in 2000, after the state’s attorney general at the time, John Cornyn—now one of its U.S. senators—confessed error due to the race issue.
He eventually got a new sentencing trial, in 2004.
But by then, years on death row—"much of it in an isolated nine by six foot cell with virtually no opportunity for human contact"—left him “severely mentally ill,” unable to present himself to a jury “without seeming a monster,” Saldaño says in his petition, filed by Thomas Scott Smith of Sherman, Texas.
The Argentine government has backed him in court for decades. It’s a “very important case for Argentina,” said Gabriela Quinteros of its foreign ministry, noting it’s “the only case of an Argentine being condemned to death and being on death row for so many years, more than twenty years.”
Saldaño killed Paul King, who was going to get food for a Thanksgiving lunch for his fellow Best Buy employees. Saldaño and another man, Jorge Chavez, took him at gunpoint and drove to a nearby lake, Texas officials recounted in their brief opposing Saldaño’s high court petition. Saldaño shot King five times, took his watch and wallet, and left him for dead.
The case is Saldaño v. Davis, U.S., No. 19-5171, review denied 11/18/19.
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