14 June 2018 :
Michael Wayne Norris was resentenced to life in prison after more than 3 decades on death row. Norris, convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her 2-year-old son, was resentenced to life following a federal appeal over flawed jury instructions that failed to consider mitigating evidence. With a new plea deal in place, the 60-year-old will serve 2 back-to-back life sentences - 1 for each victim. "We decided that justice could be served by making sure he never saw the light of day," said Tom Berg, the county's 1st assistant district attorney. The complications of decades-old evidence, the uncertainty of going before a jury again, questions about Norris's future dangerousness, and the survivors' consent all factored in the decision not to seek death again. Norris had been paroled from the Texas Department of Corrections in May 1986 after serving 15 months of an eight-year sentence for murdering Hubert Huey Ardis, Jr. during a squabble over a traffic collision when he was originally sentenced to die for the 1987 killing of Georgia Rollins and her infant son. After years of appeals, his case was ultimately bounced back to a lower court in 2015 after Houston attorney Patrick McCann won him relief as one of the so-called "Penry cases" named for Johnny Paul Penry. Penry - a former Texas death row inmate now serving multiple life sentences - was spared the ultimate punishment after his case twice went to the U.S. Supreme Court, netting a pair of decisions that touched on flawed jury instructions. During the punishment phase of a capital trial, the courts said, juries needed to be specifically instructed on the role of mitigating evidence. "It's not enough that a defendant be permitted to present evidence that could spare his life," said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. "The jury has to know what it can do with that evidence." As with the other Penry cases, Norris won a new punishment phase. Since life without parole wasn't an option when he was first sent to death row, he wasn't eligible for it the 2nd time around. Instead, prosecutors stacked 2 life sentences, then added in 3 20-year sentences for aggravated assault.
