Texas to execute man for murder of Dallas real estate agent

HOUSTON (AP) — A man who fatally stabbed a real estate agent inside a model home in suburban Dallas faces execution Wednesday night, more than 16 years after the murder.

Kosoul Chanthakoummane was on parole when he was convicted of killing 40-year-old Sarah Walker in July 2006. She was found stabbed more than 30 times at the model home in McKinney, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Dallas. .

Prosecutors say Chanthakoummane entered the model home and then hit Walker with a wooden plant stand and stabbed her before stealing her Rolex watch and a silver ring, which were never found. DNA evidence showed that Chanthakoummane’s blood was found in several places inside the model home, including under Walker’s fingernails.

Walker had been a best seller for homebuilder DR Horton. He was recently divorced and had two children.

Chanthakoummane, 41, the son of immigrants from Laos, acknowledged he was in the model home but said he only went in to drink water. He had been on parole in Texas after serving time in North Carolina for aggravated kidnapping and robbery.

“I am innocent,” Chanthakoummane said in a letter filed in federal court in March.

His lawyers had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stay his execution, challenging DNA evidence, which the appeals court previously described as the “pillar of the state’s case.” The appeals court this week denied the request. Eric Allen, one of Chanthakoummane’s attorneys, said he had not decided whether he would make a final appeal to the US Supreme Court.

His lawyers had argued that the new science raises the possibility that Chanthakoummane’s DNA was transferred to Walker’s fingernails without any direct contact between the two.

But authorities say previous DNA tests in his case failed to clear up Chanthakoummane.

“Any belief by Chanthakoummane that further DNA investigation would yield results that would be helpful to his case is fantasy,” attorneys for the Texas Attorney General’s Office wrote in court documents last month.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to grant Chanthakoummane a 120-day reprieve or commute his death sentence to a lesser sentence.

Chanthakoummane’s attorneys say his concern about the DNA evidence is part of a pattern by prosecutors of using flawed evidence in the case.

At Chanthakoummane’s trial, a forensic dentist testified that the death row inmate was the source of a bite mark on Walker’s neck. Since then, such evidence has been discredited and in 2016, Texas became the first state call for a ban on bite mark analysis in criminal cases.

The two witnesses who said they saw Chanthakoummane near the crime scene were hypnotized by Texas Department of Public Safety, or DPS, officers to help identify him.

A 2020 report from the Dallas morning news found most Texas judges still allow evidence derived from hypnosis despite criticism that it can distort memories and lead to wrongful convictions. In January 2021, DPS stopped using hypnosis. Last year, Governor Greg Abbott vetoed a bill that would have barred hypnotized people from testifying in a criminal trial.

In October 2020, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals determined that while the bite testimony would no longer be admissible in court, Chanthakoummane’s attorneys had not discredited the hypnosis-related testimony.

The appeals court also found that the DNA evidence was still strong.

At his trial, Chanthakoummane’s attorney, Keith Gore, told the jury that his client was guilty “and wanted to rob (Walker), and it didn’t work out, and he killed her.”

Walker’s father, Joseph Walker, who died last year, had opposed Chanthakoummane’s execution and had he told the Times Union in New York in 2013 he had forgiven his daughter’s killer.

If Chanthakoummane is executed, he would be the second inmate executed this year in Texas and the ninth in the US.

While Texas has been the most active capital punishment state in the country, the state’s use of the death penalty has reached near-historic levels. Juries have continued to issue fewer death sentences, and in recent years most executions have been delayed. due to the pandemic or for legal questions about what spiritual advisors can do in the death chamber.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

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