Free Rob Will!

  CUT AND PASTE BRIEFS

Source: Capital Defense Weekly
February 25, 2006
 

Everyone has done it, cutting and pasting. I have suggested on the weekly & at CLE's that attorneys look at other's briefs and "borrow" unique arguments or something that might improve their briefs. The idea is that in addition to claims specific to a single case there are broader issues that can be "cut & pasted" into a brief so you have case specific issues & "me too" claims that might impact all cases within a given jurisdiction. This story, however, goes beyond that, counsel proffered one issue, cut & paste, in two different briefs with no fact specific issues.

Unfortunately the problem isn't confined to just one writ petition. As Texas Defender Service's landmark 2002 study, titled "Lethal Indifference," found that 39 percent of habeas writs filed from 1995 to 2000 included no appropriate claims, allowing the courts to dismiss them out of hand with another 30 percent being 30 pages or less.

Angel Maturino Resendiz, the train-hopping "Railroad Killer" from Mexico, randomly murdered at least nine people in gruesome fashion in the late 1990s. Robert Gene Will, a young car thief sporting tattoos of a handgun and the Grim Reaper, was convicted of fatally shooting a Harris County deputy in the face.

The two men have little in common beyond an address on Texas' death row — and one other curious detail. The bulk of their legal briefs, filed 1 1/2 years apart by a Houston lawyer appointed to appeal their cases, are word-for-word identical, right down to a capitalization error on page 17.

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Ribnik, 52, defended his duplicate appeals, known as writs of habeas corpus, saying they raise a valid and intriguing constitutional point germane to both cases.

"I do not apologize for it. I think it's a good argument. If I got another habeas case today and had the same issue, I would do it again, because the law has not changed," he said.

Resendiz's 20-page writ is identical to the first 20 pages of Will's writ, except for the inmates' names and legal histories. Will's writ adds eight pages challenging the prosecution's attempt to link his tattoos with gang symbols.

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Ribnik said he hired no outside investigators or experts to review Will's case but denied that it indicates a lack of effort. He said his review of the trial record found that potentially mitigating evidence, including childhood sexual abuse, was adequately introduced and considered at trial.