The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Gregory Lynn Summers on Oct. 25. Summers was convicted of murder for his role in allegedly conspiring to kill three family members for money. Summers allegedly hired Andrew Cantu to kill his adoptive mother, father, and uncle for financial purposes. Cantu entered the home of the Summers family, where he fatally stabbed Mandell Eugene Summers, Helen Summers, and Billy Mack Summers.
During the trial, the prosecutors called William Spaulding to testify, an inmate whom Summers befriended while in custody. Spaulding testified only after he discovered that Summers had betrayed him, making Spaulding’s testimony unreliable. Also, Andrew Cantu, who was executed in 1999, never testified. His two accomplices, both of whom stood to gain from testifying, claimed that Cantu had made a deal with Summers, but no evidence of this agreement exists.
Furthermore, the state called Dr. Grigson to testify during the sentencing phase, where he stated that Summers may represent a future danger. However, Dr. Grigson had falsely testified for the state in another trial, making him unreliable as well. Dr. Grigson has since been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association and the Texas Society for Psychiatric Physicians for ethics violations. He has testified in about 150 capital punishment cases, where he has almost always sided with the prosecution. In many of these testimonies, Dr. Grigson has stated that the defendant is 100 percent sure to be a future danger, often without even interviewing the defendant. One member of the APA board stated, “[Dr. Grigson] oversteps the bounds of his professional competence.” This person went on to say that no person could say with 100 percent certainty that a person is a future danger to society. The court also allowed the state to produce several other witnesses who offered nothing of substance to the case, only character assessments of Summers. None of these witnesses could establish that Summers and Cantu made a deal about the murders.
Gregory Summers did not participate in the physical murder of his family members. His sentence rests upon unreliable testimony, and no direct evidence links him to Andrew Cantu. With unreliable testimony from Spaulding and Dr. Grigson, as well as no clearly established connection between Cantu and Summers, one cannot argue that Summers is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Summers has never committed a violent crime, and cannot even be linked to the murderer in this case.