A killer already in Bexar County custody for one death is now heading to trial for another murder, The Dallas Morning News reports — yet another case where the system built to contain violent offenders failed at the most basic task. Meanwhile, in Oregon, prosecutorial misconduct has for the second time voided a murder conviction in a notorious 1996 rape-killing, leaving a victim's family without justice after three decades.
Both cases expose the same truth: the institutions Americans trust to keep them safe and deliver justice are failing at the basics — whether through custodial negligence or prosecutors who lie to win.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Shandrick Buckley, already in Bexar County jail for one killing, now faces a second murder trial. How a person already detained for a violent crime was positioned to commit another remains the central question — and the officials who oversaw that custody have yet to answer for it.
In Oregon, the system failed from the other direction. The Oregonian reports that the Oregon Court of Appeals has again tossed out the murder conviction of Billy Lee Oatney Jr., 64, accused of raping and killing 34-year-old Susi Larsen in 1996. Larsen vanished after telling friends she was going to see Oatney about making jewelry for her wedding. Her body was found two weeks later in Champoeg State Park. Her funeral was held on what would have been her wedding day.
The original district attorney, Donald Scott Upham, gave Oatney an immunity deal in exchange for disclosing what happened to Larsen, promising not to use his statement against him. Investigators then relayed Oatney's account to accomplice Willford Johnston, who provided his own version implicating Oatney. Prosecutors built their case on Johnston's statements — derived from the immunized statement — violating the deal. Oatney was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998. Johnston cut his own deal: life without parole in exchange for testifying.
Years later, the Court of Appeals tossed the conviction, ruling the state violated the immunity deal. In the 2023 retrial, Johnston didn't testify — but the prosecutor made knowingly false statements to the jury, claiming Oatney acted "alone" despite Johnston's own conviction for the same crime. The appeals court reversed the conviction again Wednesday.
"By emphasizing 'the noninvolvement' of Johnston, the state improperly invited the jury to draw an inference it knew to be false — that Johnston was not involved in" Larsen's death, the court stated.
Oatney's lawyer, Richard Wolf, said he was pleased the court "recognized that prosecutors are prohibited from arguing knowingly and obviously false untrue statements to juries."
The Washington County DA's office issued a statement blaming "legal mistakes by the original prosecutor during the first trial nearly 30 years ago" — a convenient scapegoat, given that the 2023 retrial featured its own prosecutorial misconduct. The office said it would confer with the Oregon Department of Justice about whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Two states, two system failures. In Texas, a man already in custody for murder somehow had the opportunity to kill again. In Oregon, prosecutors so determined to win that they lied to juries have now twice denied a murdered woman's family the closure of a lawful conviction. The officials responsible have names — from Bexar County jail administrators to former DA Donald Scott Upham and the Washington County prosecutors who argued facts they knew were false. Whether anyone will hold them to account remains an open question.
