Sixteen years after allegedly murdering Texas actual property agent Sarah Walker, loss of life row inmate Kosoul Chanthakoummane is lower than 24 hours from his execution.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined Chanthakoummane’s newest request for a 120-day reprieve or commutation of his sentence to life with out parole on Monday, in accordance with The Related Press.
Chanthakoummane’s authorized workforce has spent the previous a number of years questioning investigators’ techniques, which included allegedly shoddy DNA and bite-mark analyses and hypnotism to garner stronger statements from eye-witnesses.
“I’m harmless,” Chanthakoummane stated in his final appeals letter in March.
Chanthakoummane was accused of robbing and killing Walker in a DR Horton mannequin dwelling she’d been exhibiting to potential homebuyers. In line with state prosecutors, Chanthakoummane bludgeoned Walker with a picket plant stand after which proceeded to stab the agent greater than 30 instances earlier than taking her Rolex watch and silver ring, each of which have been by no means recovered.
The Texas Tribune stated investigators thought of different suspects, together with Walker’s ex-husband, different romantic companions, and patrons and sellers who have been allegedly a part of different offers gone unsuitable. Additionally they reexamined one other case Walker was concerned in mere months earlier than her homicide when assailants attacked and robbed her at her Dallas space dwelling.
Nonetheless, brokers and purchaser testimony of an Asian man parking a white Mustang in entrance of Walker’s itemizing and strolling inside led police to arrest Chanthakoummane, who had a rap sheet that included violent crimes.
Each the AP and Texas Tribune‘s stories recounted Chanthakoummane’s preliminary trial, the place the plaintiff’s consultants hinged their case on chew marks and remnants of Chanthakoummane’s blood below Walker’s fingernails.
After initially denying he ever went into the mannequin dwelling, Chanthakoummane recanted his story and stated he’d gone inside for water and the blood below Walker’s fingernails was a results of her touching the identical floor he’d touched with an injured hand.
Chanthakoummane maintained his innocence all through the preliminary trial and instantly started the appeals course of. After a number of failures, The Tribune stated attorneys Catherine Clare Bernhard and Eric J. Allen discovered some success in 2020 after they satisfied a decide to throw out the bitemark testimony below the state’s 2013 “junk science” regulation.
“Critically, present scientific data contradicts the trial courtroom’s earlier discovering that the ‘solely affordable inference’ to be drawn from the DNA proof is that Mr. Chanthakoummane violently attacked Ms. Walker,” Bernhard and Allen instructed the Tribune on Wednesday.
His workforce additionally highlighted the picket plant stand used to bludgeon Walker had DNA from another person; nevertheless, the Collin County district lawyer’s workplace and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles stated that wasn’t sufficient to commute Chanthakoummane’s sentence.
“Chanthakoummane presents no new science within the subject of DNA evaluation, and even when there have been one thing new, he fails to point out it will have prevented his conviction,” courtroom paperwork learn.
Walkers’ household and associates have been silent in recent times about Chanthakoummane’s a number of appeals, and Inman has but to obtain a response to a request for remark from Walker’s former employer, DR Horton.
Nonetheless, Walkers’ late father did assist Chanthakoummane’s request to obtain life in jail. In 2013, Joseph Walker shared private recollections about his slain daughter’s life with a neighborhood information outlet the Instances Union, and petitioned the group to “pray for [his] daughter’s killer.”
“The FBI says it was one of the crucial brutal single murders they ever investigated,” Mr. Walker stated. “He stabbed her 27 instances. Bashed her cranium in. She had chew marks on her. It was mindless. It was a horrible, horrible crime.”
“She was vigorous, an attractive younger girl,” he added. “Folks need revenge, however revenge by no means works. Sure, it was only a completely mindless, random act. However everybody deserves each little bit of their life to allow them to have an opportunity to repent and go to heaven. I consider that absolutely, fully. God needs to not lose even one soul.”
Except Chanthakoummane’s authorized workforce appeals to america Supreme Court docket; he would be the second inmate put to loss of life this 12 months in Texas and the ninth within the U.S.
E-mail Marian McPherson