EXECUTED APRIL 2002

Mr. Gerald Garrett
Chairman, Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
Price Daniel, Sr. Building
209 W. 14th Street, Suite 500
Austin, Texas 78701

Re: Jose Santellan

Dear Chairman Garrett:

We write to ask that you grant clemency to José Santellan, and commute his sentence to life in prison.   Mr. Santellan is scheduled to be executed on April 10, 2002.  Several factors lead us to believe that a death sentence is inappropriate in his case.  Without a doubt, Mr. Santellan s case deserves further review.

First, Mr. Santellan suffers from organic brain damage.  His original trial attorney failed to discover this and bring it to the attention of the jury.  Mr. Santellan s brain damage makes it more difficult for him to react in a rational manner to the events around him.  

Moreover, Mr. Santellan grew up in conditions that can only be described as horrific.  These conditions had a profound influence on his ability to function as a normal person.  His siblings describe their mother physically attacking her children, and locking them in a closet for days at a time.  When Mr. Santellan was four or five, his mother tried to drown him in the bathtub.  Also, Mr. Santellan was once impaled in the forehead with a fork, which may have also been done by his mother.

The information we now know about Mr. Santellan s brain damage and traumatic childhood was unavailable to the jury during his initial trial.  Had the jury known this information, they would have better understood what led Mr. Santellan to commit this crime, and they may have been convinced to spare his life.

In order to seek the death penalty, the prosecution relied on an expansive definition of kidnapping that was later overturned by the Fifth Circuit.  Nevertheless the Fifth Circuit allowed Mr. Santellan s death sentence to stand based on another legal theory that is not supported by the facts.

This body is the forum of last resort to assure that the death penalty is only applied in appropriate cases.  In light of Mr. Santellan s history of mental disability and severe abuse, we respectfully urge that life imprisonment and not death is the appropriate punishment.

Sincerely,

Diann Rust-Tierney                                                 
ACLU Capital Punishment Project

William Harrell
ACLU of Texas