The Texas court of criminal appeals has overturned the death sentence of Clarence Curtis Jordan, a 70-year-old man with intellectual disabilities, who spent nearly 50 years on death row – much of that time without a lawyer.
Jordan was convicted in 1978 for the murder of Joe L Williams, a 40-year-old grocer in Houston, and was sentenced to death. In the years that followed, courts determined that Jordan, who has intellectual disabilities, was “incompetent”, making him ineligible for execution under constitutional standards.
In 2024, attorney Ben Wolff, director of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs in Austin, took up Jordan’s case. In 2025, he filed a petition to the court requesting Jordan’s death sentence be overturned, arguing that the case was “a troubling, yet remediable failure of Texas criminal justice”, according to the Houston Press.
“Mr Jordan is an incompetent, brain-damaged person with an IQ that has been assessed at scores of 56 and 60. Mr Jordan has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, mental retardation and organic brain dysfunction – and was known during his trial as Father Nature. He has largely been unable to advocate or care for himself,” the filing continued.
Sadly - now what? This man is going from the only housing, food, “health care” and routine his adult life has ever known, to a society not equipped to help anyone adapt to life within it. He has an intellectual disability and schizophrenia, is likely largely unskilled for today’s workforce. If his representation were to pursue a claim and he were to win a payout, he is probably not equipped to manage that money and would become a target for people wishing to relieve him of it.
I’m not saying for a moment that he should stay in prison, what I’m saying is that it’s a damning indictment on society, and government priorities that this man will probably be no safer, no less stressed, no more able to thrive and enjoy his later years in life, than if her were to remain in prison. I worry that unless this legal activist is prepared to dedicate years of personal investment of time and energy facilitating this man’s life out in the world, we’re watching a lamb being thrown to the wolves.
They’re not freeing him. Just pulling the death sentence.
We need single payer and proper mental health support in this country…not this shit