Texas set to execute Kosoul Chanthakoummane for 2006 murder

TEXAS, USA — Texas plans to execute Kosoul Chanthakoummane on Wednesday for the 2006 murder of an actual property agent in a Collin County mannequin house. It could be the second execution this 12 months in a state that usually places extra individuals to dying than every other.

Chanthakoummane, now 41, is set to die for the murder of Sarah Walker, who was brutally crushed and stabbed to dying whereas exhibiting a house in a McKinney subdivision. The 40-year-old’s Rolex watch and ring have been lacking when police arrived.

Witnesses positioned Chanthakoummane on the mannequin house, and a chew mark on Walker’s again and blood beneath her fingernails and on the scene have been linked to him, in accordance to courtroom data. The dying row prisoner has lengthy claimed he’s harmless.

Over his practically 15 years on dying row, the prisoner’s attorneys have chipped away on the reliability of proof in opposition to him. Forensic scientists have largely debunked the flexibility to match chew marks to a person. And the witnesses who testified Chanthakoummane was the person they noticed on the day of the murder had beforehand been hypnotized by police investigators, despite scientific evidence that the apply can distort reminiscences.

But analysts additionally decided his DNA was on Walker’s fingernails and elsewhere on the crime scene, and that proof largely has satisfied the courts they’ve the suitable man. In his final appeals to Collin County and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals filed final week, Chanthakoummane’s attorneys argued that the DNA proof can be questionable.

Under a 2013 Texas “junk science” legislation, courts can overturn a conviction when the scientific proof offered at trial has since modified or been discredited.

“Critically, current scientific knowledge contradicts the trial court’s previous finding that the ‘only reasonable inference’ to be drawn from the DNA evidence is that Mr. Chanthakoummane violently attacked Ms. Walker,” wrote attorneys Catherine Clare Bernhard and Eric J. Allen.

In a courtroom submitting, the Collin County district lawyer’s workplace replied that “Chanthakoummane presents no new science in the field of DNA analysis, and even if there were something new, he fails to show it would have prevented his conviction.”

After Walker was killed, police initially checked out individuals shut to her. Friends pointed to her ex-husband or romantic companions, and others reported overseas buyers have been upset together with her for huge losses in actual property offers, in accordance to Chanthakoummane’s newest submitting. Walker was additionally robbed and attacked at her house a number of months earlier, whereas Chanthakoummane was incarcerated in North Carolina for an armed theft dedicated when he was 16.

DNA from blood samples and one other actual property agent’s report shifted the investigation’s focus to Chanthakoummane. The different agent, who was promoting a house close to Walker’s mannequin house, and her husband instructed police they noticed an Asian man in a white Ford Mustang park throughout the road from the mannequin house across the time of the murder. The couple later agreed to hypnosis by a Texas Ranger to see if they may bear in mind extra, however the state stated the controversial apply didn’t considerably alter their testimony.

At trial, one other actual property agent testified that the day earlier than Walker’s murder, Chanthakoummane got here to her house and requested to use the cellphone, saying his automotive broke down, in accordance to courtroom paperwork. She known as the police when he refused to go away.

Chanthakoummane initially denied ever going to the mannequin house, however beneath police interrogation stated he went into the house to use the cellphone and drink some water after having automotive bother. He stated he didn’t see anybody inside and famous earlier accidents on his palms might have left blood behind.

Police and prosecutors rejected the assertion, however Chanthakoummane’s attorneys say new scientific analysis exhibits his DNA might have been transferred to Walker’s fingernails with none direct contact between them — for occasion, if she touched an object he had left a blood mark on. The National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a draft report final 12 months that stated the potential for such transfers can’t be ignored in prison investigations.

Chanthakoummane’s attorneys famous an example of a man who was suspected of murder as a result of his DNA was discovered on the fingernails of a murder sufferer. It was later found the suspect had been injured on the day of the killing and ridden in the identical ambulance because the murder sufferer hours earlier, leading to his DNA switch.

Collin County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lisa Braxton stated the idea of DNA transfers, nevertheless, is just not new.

“Contamination and transfer are and always have been a consideration in the interpretation of mixtures,” the prosecutor wrote in her submitting. “And even if the review’s conclusions constituted ‘new’ science, Chanthakoummane presents no evidence that the lab misinterpreted the DNA mixture on the victim’s fingernails – or any other mixture, for that matter.”

Chanthakoummane’s final attraction additionally makes an attempt to discredit witness testimony stating his automotive was exterior the mannequin house across the time of Walker’s murder. His attorneys acknowledged {that a} former deputy chief of the Richardson Police Department instructed murder investigators he spoke to Walker within the mannequin house for a number of minutes across the time she is believed to have been killed. The deputy chief talked about one other automotive with a girl driving on the road, however not a white Mustang.

The prisoner’s attorneys additionally famous new DNA testing executed final 12 months on samples from a plant stand, thought by prosecutors to have been used to fatally beat Walker, didn’t match Chanthakoummane and as a substitute probably implicated one other individual.

“Unsurprisingly, the defense did not highlight the gaps and inconsistencies in the State’s theory, including the inconsistent accounts regarding when the white Mustang was observed near the crime scene,” Bernhard and Allen wrote.

In 2019, Chanthakoummane had argued for a brand new trial as a result of his lawyer instructed jurors he was responsible in opposition to his needs. The prisoner instructed the courts he insisted on sustaining his innocence, however as a substitute, his lawyer stated in his opening assertion that Chanthakoummane needed to rob Walker and ended up killing her.

The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the prisoner’s pleas for a brand new trial, saying he might have raised the difficulty earlier, regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that the Sixth Amendment ensures a defendant the suitable to insist that his counsel chorus from admitting guilt.

Without courtroom intervention Wednesday, Chanthakoummane will likely be injected with a deadly dose of pentobarbital within the state’s dying chamber in Huntsville after 6 p.m.

This story originally appeared in the Texas Tribune.