His Appeal Lost for 28 Years, Texas Prisoner Finally Off Death Row
When sentenced to Texas’ death row in 1988 for a murder committed the year before, Syed Rabbani was a healthy 23-year-old. Now 57, he is psychotic and blind, left almost entirely unable to move or speak by a stroke. An appeal he filed was lost by Harris County prosecutors for nearly three decades before it was granted by the state Court of Criminal Appeal in September 2023, tossing his death sentence and substituting one for life in prison.
“This case says nothing good about the way we treat the human beings in our criminal justice system,” said Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robin Maher. “That a man so vulnerable could be simply forgotten is just inexcusable.”
His attorney, Texas Office of Forensic and Capital Writs Director Ben Wolff, said he found Rabbani in “the most disgusting prison circumstance” ever witnessed in a 25-year career, his cell walls smeared with feces, the floor littered with dirty bed pads, mold furring the toilet.
Originally set to die in 1993, Rabbani was spared after pro bono appellate counsel Dick Wheelan filed a habeas petition, which triggered a psychiatric evaluation that resulted in a 1994 diagnosis of “mental illness of psychotic proportions.” Wheelan died in 2008 without pursuing the appeal further. A successor appointed two years later, Staci Biggar, lacked qualifications to represent a capital defendant, Wolff later told the Court of Criminal Appeal after taking over the case in 2022. She also filed nothing to advance the case.
So what happened during the 28 years the appeal lay dormant before Wolff took it over? Rabbani initially filed several pro se suits naming defendants like “Brutal Country, U.S.A.” and “all life forms in all galaxies.” But a federal judge in 2003 barred him from filing future cases, citing “continued abuse of the court system”—though at that point Rabbani’s own appeal had languished nearly a decade. In 2012, Harris County prosecutors told the Court of Criminal Appeal that Rabbani was not competent to stand trial, but no agreement was ever entered to restore competency. By the time Wolff saw him, Rabbani had “deteriorated past the point of possible recovery,” the attorney told the Court.
Predictably, the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) pushed back against any suggestion that Rabbani suffered medical neglect while confined. “All inmates have access to comprehensive health care, including mental health care,” insisted TDCJ Director of Communications Amanda Hernandez. Yet though Rabbani’s reports of seizures date back to 2011, no treatment for epilepsy was recorded by TDCJ, not even after a 2017 seizure caused him to fall and hit his head. Another series of seizures in February 2022 came with acute pancreatitis, a heart attack and a stroke. That left the prisoner brain-damaged, his mobility and ability to communicate both extremely limited. As Wolff told the Court, TDCJ “essentially left Mr. Rabbani to rot in his cell.”
At the Estelle Unit where Rabbani is held, TDCJ staffers sought to transfer him to hospice care, a request denied in November 2023 by a Harris County judge, who punted the decision to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles or Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Syed Fasaini, 34, a half-brother who surfaced in Rabbani’s native Bangladesh in September 2023, offered to take in the prisoner were he paroled and deported.
“35 years in prison is too much punishment,” Fasaini said.
“Texas has lost the moral authority to keep him confined,” Wolff agreed. “What’s confinement without purpose? What’s punishment without purpose? It’s torture.”
Source: Houston Landing