TEXAS : Death Row Inmate’s Conviction Set Aside

A Texas appeals court set aside the conviction of Death Row inmate Clarence Lee Brandley, more than two years after a judge ruled the black man was unfairly tried in the slaying of a white teen-ager. Brandley, 38, spent nearly nine years on Death Row. He was convicted of the 1980 strangulation and rape of a teen-ager at Conroe High School, where Brandley was a janitor. The court said the state’s investigation of the slaying led to a trial that lacked “the rudiments of fairness” and ordered Brandley released to the custody of the Montgomery County sheriff for a possible new trial.