have not had the avenue of appeal that he has now and it could well he would have been executed by now. we thought that was not a reasonable strategy under the circumstances of the case given that you had a client insisting on his innocence. in 2005 owen filed an appeal arguing that comer provided ineffective counsel in not testing dna and failing to introduce hank s codeine allergy which could have explained how he slept through the murders. the toxicology reports said codeine and vodka. skinner s blood codeine level was .44. a toxicologist testified that was so high skinner would have been in a coma-like state. then the question is if he were allergic to codeine, why would he take it? to counter hank s allergy claim, the state called dr. michael chamalis who treated
didn t do it? it is just mind boggling that evidence preserved from the crime scene, including a male jacket and the murder weapons to this day is not tested. curious why hank s attorney harold comer hadn t tested key evidence sandrin traveled to pampa. he was a former prosecutor who had prosecuted hank twice. there were leads in testing he should have pursued. there s a bloody hand print on the trash bag where the knife is found with the kitchen towel. it s not hank s print. whose is it? comer insists that not testing every item for dna was a strategic decision. we argued that you can t send a man to his death. as long as there s evidence laying off in some evidence room that has not been tested. i think if we d insisted on testing before trial he would
skinner s previous counsel should have introduced his codeine allergy. but they ruled that this information would not have swayed the jury. they also ruled that comer s decision not to test the dna was an intentional legal strategy and not grounds for a retrial. the state s approach is to say, well, any individual item of evidence that we ve come up with to call into question their theory standing alone wouldn t have changed the outcome of the case. but when you think of it as a wall and suddenly it has a lot of little holes in it a reasonable juror might say this just is too much doubt for me. despite crucial dna evidence yet to be tested the court set an execution date, february 24th, 2010. this is just so damn insane, it s like a bad rerun of the twilight zone. my lawyer came up here to see me and he told me, he said, man, i m scared, i m going to be honest with you, we re in trouble.