Overlooked in the churn of one of the country's busiest courthouses, the forgotten appeals included two death penalty cases, and one from a man who's already finished his 20-year sentence.
In that case, Tommy Taylor argued his trial lawyer had violated his rights to counsel by failing to set his drug possession conviction up for appeal before the legal deadline. By the time the Court of Criminal Appeals saw the case in 2022, Taylor had already served his 20-year sentence. The court sent the case back to Houston to find out if Taylor still wanted to pursue an appeal and, after learning he did, allowed the former prisoner to move forward with his now-pending litigation.
But it’s still unknown exactly how or why these appeals went cold. Judges and attorneys have blamed different combinations of apathetic defense attorneys, thoughtless trial court judges and bad case management."If there are holes in our current procedures that need to be plugged going forward, this Court needs to find them," he wrote in November.
One weekend in 1994, while home in Houston for a visit with his mother, Dixon left with two other boys to play basketball. When they drove past a gas station, one of the boys testified, Dixon wanted to steal a car he spotted unattended with the door open. He got out, and, when Peavy returned to her car, Dixon shot her several times during a struggle.
Dixon was never able to tell his lawyers what happened during Peavy’s murder or have any effective communication with them whatsoever, one of his trial attorneys, Dick Wheelan, said in a 1998 affidavit. Wheelan noted that Dixon slept through most of the trial. Prosecutors used that against him, but Wheelan said he thought Dixon shut down because "he simply did not understand what was going on and could not follow events.
In a phone interview last week, DeAngelo said she had no idea why the appeal was answered more than a decade after it was filed and did not know how the case resurfaced on her desk.The next year, at the prosecution’s request, the court ordered Dixon’s other trial attorney, Wayne Hill, to provide an affidavit about his thoughts on Dixon’s competence.
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