Hank Skinner

Common card · No. 274857

Henry Watkins Skinner (April 4, 1962 – February 16, 2023) was an American death row inmate in Texas. In 1995, he was convicted of bludgeoning to death his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and stabbing to death her two adult sons, Randy Busby and Elwin Caler. On March 24, 2010, twenty minutes before his scheduled execution (second execution date), the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution to consider the question of whether Skinner could request testing of DNA his attorney chose not to have tested at his original trial in 1994. A third execution date for November 9, 2011, was also ultimately stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on November 7, 2011. On March 6, 2011, the Supreme Court issued an opinion holding that Skinner could sue under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (see Civil Rights Act of 1871), claiming that Texas' rules for seeking post-conviction DNA testing upon which the judges relied were too narrow or restrictive. The ruling did not specifically grant Skinner the DNA testing...

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