Before she left office in 2022, former Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson made an unexpected decision.
She told the state’s highest criminal court that Tarrant County prosecutors lied to the jury in a death penalty case — and the man sentenced to death deserved, at least, a new punishment trial.
In siding with Paul Storey’s defense team, Wilson renewed efforts to get him another chance at sentencing.
His lawyers are now asking for the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider Storey’s case, but Wilson's successor, DA Phil Sorrells, seemed to walk back his office's support of Storey.
In a Supreme Court filing on Dec. 18, Sorrells asked the court to reject Storey’s appeal. Texas courts have already ruled against him, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his case in 2022, Sorrells wrote.
“Storey has given this Court no reason to upend those decisions or to revisit its original denial [...] in this case,” the filing reads.
Storey was sentenced to death in 2008 for killing Jonas Cherry during a robbery. Then-Tarrant County prosecutor Christy Jack told the jury during Storey’s trial, “It should go without saying that all of Jonas’s family and everyone who loved him believe the death penalty is appropriate.”
That sentence is the crux of Storey’s case.
Cherry’s parents maintain they have always opposed the death penalty. They have since fought to get Storey off death row, helping to halt his execution in 2017, days before he was scheduled to die.
KERA asked the Tarrant County DA’s Office for an interview about this new filing. A spokesperson did not respond. Christy Jack and her co-prosecutor, Robert Foran, have denied wrongdoing.
One of Storey’s attorneys, Mike Ware, said he’s disappointed the Tarrant County DA’s Office has taken this stance.
"They have, in my opinion, gotten bogged down in what I would call procedural minutiae,” Ware said. “That has nothing to do with truth, justice, or the integrity of the criminal justice system.”
Sorrells’ new filing does not refute the accusations of wrongdoing in Storey’s case, Ware pointed out.
The filing does make it clear a previous district attorney made that accusation. Otherwise, it argues Storey has gotten his due process, and the Supreme Court should not take up his case.
Storey's case has moved up and down the court system for years. In 2018, a Tarrant County judge ruled Storey should get a new punishment trial, but Texas’ highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, threw out that recommendation.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Storey’s case, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement in his favor.
“Prosecutors not only failed to disclose Cherry’s parents’ unwavering desire that Storey not be sentenced to death, but also misled the jury in summation to successfully secure a death sentence,” Sotomayor wrote.
A few months later, Wilson asked the state Court of Criminal Appeals to help Storey.
“Under these most extraordinary circumstances, Storey should, at the very least, be granted a new punishment trial,” she wrote in her filing. “Justice demands it.”
This past June, two years after Wilson filed her motion, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Wilson’s request without explanation.
That has led Storey back to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October, he filed a petition for the justices to hear his case. The state confessed to wrongdoing, and prosecutors’ attempts to make it right should be taken seriously, Storey’s attorneys argued.
“When that position of respect and credibility is abused with a lie that is perpetrated solely to win the case, then it's up to the appellate courts, when this is pointed out and made abundantly clear, to set it right,” Ware said.
The parents of Storey’s victim, Glenn and Judith Cherry, have also continued to support Storey’s efforts to get off death row. They filed a brief on his behalf with the Supreme Court.
“Killing Storey will not bring Jonas back. Nor will it bring the Cherrys any closure,” the brief reads. “Moreover, the Cherrys do not want to see Storey’s mother suffer through losing a child like they have.”
Ware anticipates the Supreme Court will decide whether to take on Storey’s case sometime in the spring.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on X @MirandaRSuarez.
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