Texas court vacates Harris County man’s death sentence after 47 years

Nearly 47 years after Clarence Curtis Jordan was sent to death row, Texas judges vacated his death sentence and ordered Harris County to try punishment again, a reversal that puts the county’s capital-case machinery under a harsh light.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a per curiam opinion in Ex parte Clarence Curtis Jordan, No. WR-17,434-02, and granted habeas relief on Jordan’s Penry claim. The court said the jury instructions used at his 1983 punishment phase did not allow jurors to fully consider mitigating evidence, then sent the case back to the 184th District Court for a new punishment trial. The court dismissed Jordan’s Atkins claim as waived in this proceeding.

Jordan was convicted in 1978 in the killing of Houston grocer Joe L. Williams, after a robbery at Rice Food Market on Oct. 14, 1977. His conviction and sentence were vacated on direct appeal in 1982, and he was retried and again sentenced to death in 1983. Court records show an execution had already been set for August 1987, and Jordan filed an Article 11.07 habeas application in June 1987, beginning a long post-conviction track that did not produce a final break in the case for decades.

That delay is central to what makes this ruling so striking. Jordan spent most of his life under a death sentence while his case moved through bursts of litigation, mental-health findings, and long stretches without consistent counsel pressing delayed appeals. Reporting on the case says he was found intellectually disabled and periodically incompetent to be executed, and that his file resurfaced only after renewed advocacy and the appointment of new counsel in 2024.

Benjamin “Ben” Wolff, director of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, said the case reflects “a troubling truth” about a system in which vulnerable people can be “forgotten or cast aside.” His office represented Jordan in the post-conviction proceedings and filed the habeas application that led to the court’s review. Harris County prosecutors called the ruling “what justice looks like,” while saying the conviction remains intact and the victim’s family still bears the harm of the crime.

Multiple reports said prosecutors later indicated they would not pursue another death sentence, which would leave life imprisonment as the practical outcome if the county moves ahead with resentencing. The decision also lands as Harris County continues working through a backlog of delayed criminal cases and appeals, raising fresh questions about how many old capital cases may still carry unresolved legal flaws.