Texas has not sent a Democrat to its highest criminal court since 1994. Last week it sent three. Okey Anyiam, Audra Riley and Holly Taylor won the seats of Republican judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals, the court that hears every death penalty appeal in the state.
Two of the three are Black, according to Texas Monthly, which reported it will be the first time three Black judges sit on the nine-member court together. They will join Jesse McClure III, who was described by the Texas Appellate Project as the first Black judge on the court since 1998 and only the third in Texas history. The court has existed for more than a century.
Anyiam is a Dallas criminal defense lawyer who has been licensed since 1997. He led Republican Thomas Smith by more than 237,000 votes with 99% of the ballots counted. Riley is a judge on a Dallas County criminal district court. She beat Kevin Yeary, a sitting Republican judge. Taylor defeated John Messinger.
The sweep was not limited to one court. Democrats also won all four contested seats on the Texas Supreme Court, which now stands at five Republicans and four Democrats, and all three seats on the 15th Court of Appeals. The Texas Tribune and KSAT both reported it as the first Democratic victories in statewide judicial races in more than three decades.
What a bench like this can change
The Court of Criminal Appeals is where a Texas death sentence goes to be checked, and where a person who says they were wrongly convicted makes the last argument available in state court. For decades, every judge deciding those appeals was a Republican elected statewide. The people most affected by that court’s decisions, Black defendants among them, never had a judge who had sat where they were sitting.
Republicans have an answer ready: the court still leans their way, 6-3, and three votes do not rewrite precedent. That is true. A minority can still write dissents, force a recorded vote and make the majority explain itself in public. On a court that decides who is executed, that is not nothing.
The new judges take their seats in January. The next test is the first death penalty appeal that reaches them with a close vote. Texans will see on the record who sided with whom.
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