Gary David Green v. Texas

Petitioner Gary Green was sentenced to death in Texas in 2019. At the sentencing phase of his capital trial, the State elicited misleading and highly prejudicial testimony: that Gary’s own father allegedly wanted his son to die. Though the elder Green was unable to testify at the trial, the State called former Sheriff Bob Alford to testify that, after a domestic dispute at the Green home decades prior, Bobby Green told the sheriff that he “wanted [the sheriff] to kill him.” As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recognized, “maybe the jury felt less moral trepidation about sentencing [Gary] to death knowing that his own father approved.” This petition thus presents the following questions: Whether the holding of Andrew v. White, that general legal principles established by this Court are to be applied to various factual patterns, applies to the general Eighth Amendment principle established in Caldwell v. Mississippi? Whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to follow the general legal principle of Caldwell v. Mississippi and assertion that Caldwell is instead limited to its specific facts, constitutes an unwarranted refusal to apply controlling Supreme Court precedent?