Supreme Court declines case of Fort Worth man whose lawyers said had ‘warrior gene’

The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to consider the capital murder case of a man sentenced to death in the killings of two people in Fort Worth. The defendant contended that he should have an opportunity to demonstrate that his trial attorneys were profoundly ineffective because of their use of an argument related to his genes to prove something that they should have been attempting to refute.

In July 2013 in east Fort Worth, Amos Wells shot to death three people, including his pregnant girlfriend, her mother and the girlfriend’s 10-year-old brother.

In November 2016, a jury in 432nd District Court found Wells guilty of capital murder in the two deaths in which he was indicted, and during a penalty phase hearing was asked to determine whether Wells was a future danger to society. State District Judge Ruben Gonzalez presided at the trial.

Wells’ appellate attorney argued in the petition seeking a Supreme Court review that Wells’ trial attorneys made the state’s case on the future danger question for it. Wells’ attorneys at trial were Bill Ray and Steve Gordon. He is represented now by Ashley Steele of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, a Texas state public defender office.

Trial “counsel searched the globe for someone who would support the idea that their African American client’s ‘warrior gene’ made him incurably violent,” according to the petition. “Counsel located a married couple in Italy and a psychiatrist from Florida to support their theory of eugenics. The first spouse, Italian biologist Dr. Silvia Pellegrini, performed genetic testing on Mr. Wells and several of his family members.

“Pellegrini’s husband, Pietro Pietrini, interpreted his wife’s testing. Dr. William Bernet relied on the testing to show that Mr. Wells had a low-activity variant of the MAOA gene. Dr. Bernet testified at length about the purported links between the MAOA variant and an individual’s increased risk for perpetrating violence,” according to the petition.

Bernet “testified that because Mr. Wells had a rough childhood and low-activity MAOA, he was ‘four and a half times’ more likely to be violent than the average person,” according to the petition.

The strategy appeared to support a finding that Wells would remain a danger and that the death penalty was merited, Steele suggested in the petition, which sought the review of a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judgment denying an evidentiary hearing.

At Wells’ trial, his counsel “presented racist, eugenic pseudo-science to argue that he was more dangerous because he carried the ‘warrior gene,’ thereby ensuring he be found a future danger and sentenced to death,” Steele wrote. “Yet Texas courts prohibited Mr. Wells from presenting any evidence to prove his Sixth Amendment post conviction claim.”

Killed in the shooting were Annette Reed, Chanice Reed and Eddie McCuin Jr.

“This defendant slaughtered three generations out of one family,” Lloyd Whelchel, who prosecuted the case with Kevin Rousseau, told jurors in an opening statement. “He took four innocent lives that day.”

The prosecutors argued that after Wells shot his girlfriend and her mother, he chased McCuin through a house and shot him while he cowered on the floor.

On the matter of the petition, the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office argued that “the trial court properly found that an evidentiary hearing was not required because no controverted, previously unresolved factual issues material to the legality of Wells’s confinement existed.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied the petition.

An execution date for Wells has not been set.