In an hours-long hearing, Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole heard testimony directly from the juror at the center of a death row inmate’s last-minute legal battle to stop his December execution.
Lee Hall, who has changed his name from Leroy Hall Jr., was convicted in the April 1991 burning death of his ex-girlfriend, Traci Crozier. The 53-year-old is set to be executed on Dec. 5 and has requested to die by electrocution. Tennessee’s primary method of execution is lethal injection.
Last month, Hall’s defense filed three different petitions that essentially would accomplish the same thing – stop or delay the execution – if they weren’t dismissed. The motions ask for a new trial based on claims of constitutional violations after a juror – identified only as “Juror A” – recently disclosed she’d had a history with domestic violence, including rape, prior to Hall’s trial.
Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston has vehemently opposed the petitions, noting that the arguments are untimely and don’t meet the standards set by state laws or precedents set by previous court rulings, and Poole dismissed two of the petitions earlier this week for those reasons.
“But there is law to the effect that in certain circumstances of due process fairness will allow certain things to be presented to the court, and for that reason, I have allowed this second petition for post-conviction relief to go forward,” Poole noted at the beginning of Thursday’s hearing. But “understanding that, statutorily, there is no basis for the second petition for post-conviction relief to be filed.”