Life plea for long-time Texas death row inmate
After almost 23 years on death row, yesterday Rodney Charles Rachal accepted responsibility for two capital murders and two aggravated robberies, agreeing to serve four stacked life sentences and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office finally ended its 23 year quest to take his life.
Originally sentenced to death in 1992 for the 1990 capital murder of Charles Washington, Rodney had been returned to Harris County for resentencing after Rob Owen and Anthony Haughton won a reversal on Penry/Tennard grounds. GRACE’s donor-funded Retrial/Resentencing Project stepped in to represent Rodney for free, ultimately negotiating a resolution that saves Rodney from returning to death row, gives finality to the victims and survivors of all four crimes, and spares both families the re-traumatization of a second trial.
But what's really remarkable is what happened after the judgments were entered . . .
In her victim impact statement, Mr. Washington's mother told Rodney that she never hated him and long ago forgave him because that is what God asks of her. With the case finally over, the families of Charles Washington and Rodney Rachal spent over an hour together in a remarkably powerful and healing dialogue in which Rodney’s family shared his and their own remorse and Mr. Washington’s mother explained how much she had needed their apology, that it helped her heal and keep her promise to God that she would not hate or be swallowed up by anger. Both families shared their recollections of the tragic night that changed all their lives and their experience of the decades of litigation, coming to the conclusion that, while the adversarial system had treated them as adversaries and sometimes made them feel or act as adversaries, they are not. In fact, they understand one another's pain and regret more intimately than anyone else ever could, sharing a terrible and constant longing to turn back the clock so things could be different.
After the words and tears of remorse, apology and forgiveness came talk about the future. Pictures of the grand kids, bragging about graduations and weddings -- proof that life continues. Which brought them naturally to Rodney's capacity for redemption and the shared hope of everyone that he could also now move forward as a changed man and better father. Both families said that having the case resolved and being able to talk with one another free of legal consequences had changed their understanding of one another, brought them peace and would allow them to get “unstuck” and move forward.
This is the 16th life-saving plea that GRACE’s donor-funded Retrial/Resentencing Project has successfully negotiated for a Texas death row inmate. The work of the Retrial/Resentencing Project wouldn’t be possible without our “Steadfast Friends” – those who keep GRACE’s doors open by enrolling as automatic monthly donors. We don’t ask our friends to give until it hurts -- we ask for whatever you can give comfortably again and again.
23 mitigators and lawyers come to GRACE's Mitigation Skills Bootcamp!
May 22-24, 2013: GRACE held an intensive in-house training on our methods and protocols. In recent years, we have opened it up to anyone from the capital defense community, space permitting. The Bootcamp is an intensive, interactive workshop to develop or hone the practical skills needed for working within a multi-disciplinary team to identify, develop and present social history evidence. It is required of all attorneys, mitigation specialists and interns joining GRACE as attorneys, mitigators, fellows or volunteers, so it is designed for folks with a wide range of experience and it addresses the roles of all core defense team members.
GRACE is contributes to the development, articulation, and protection of a high quality standard of care for capital counsel and mitigation specialists by developing and presenting our unique, skills-based, mitigation bootcamps for attorneys, investigators and mitigation specialists across the U.S.
