After spending almost 50 years on Texas Death Row, Clarence Jordan could soon be a free man.
Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas was supposed to resentence Jordan on Wednesday but asked for more time to consider competency issues, delaying the proceedings to June 8. At that time, the judge will consider arguments that Jordan should be granted life with the possibility of parole. If granted, his case could go before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles later this year.
Jordan was not present in court on Wednesday. The 70-year-old is quadriplegic, bedridden and confined to a wheelchair on the rare occasions that he can leave his prison cell. Attorney Ben Wolff, director of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs in Austin, says that in addition to Jordan’s health issues, the inmate has intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia. Jordan had a stroke in 2010 and was moved from death row in Livingston to a maximum security unit in Huntsville that has some limited medical capabilities.
“He is unable to feed himself or properly swallow food, and requires an endoscopic gastric tube to obtain nutrition,” according to a 15-page pre-sentencing memorandum filed with the court on Wednesday. “In effect, he is blind, mute, confined to a hospital bed or chair, captive not only of his life-long mental illness and neurological disabilities, but his deteriorated physical and cerebral condition.”
Jordan hadn’t had legal representation for more than 30 years when Wolff took the case in 2024. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared 38 years ago that Jordan was “so mentally ill that the Eighth Amendment precluded his execution.”
“This is an example of how often people with the greatest needs fall through the cracks of the criminal justice system,” Wolff told the Houston Press in April. “This is a case about which no one should be proud. He was effectively warehoused and forgotten after everybody agreed he was incompetent to be executed. In the meantime, Supreme Court precedent made clear that his sentence was unconstitutional, but until we intervened, nobody was there to advocate for him.”
Wolff said his client’s sentence was unconstitutional because, at the time of his original death sentence, the jury was not able to fully consider mitigating evidence related to mental illness that was presented by trial attorneys. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed.
“This case presents a troubling, yet remediable failure of Texas criminal justice,” Wolff said in a 2025 legal filing. “Mr. Jordan is an incompetent, brain-damaged person with an IQ that has been assessed at scores of 56 and 60. Mr. Jordan has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, mental retardation, and organic brain dysfunction — and was known during his trial as Father Nature. He has largely been unable to advocate or care for himself.”
The death sentence handed down by a Harris County jury in 1978 was overturned in April by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, but Jordan remains on death row until he receives a new sentence. The prisoner has been on death row longer than any other Texas inmate with one exception, Harvey Earvin of Angelina County, who was sentenced in December 1977.
According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records, Jordan was convicted of capital murder in the October 14, 1977, shooting death of Joe L. Williams, 40, a clerk at Rice Food Market in Houston. Several employees identified Jordan as the robber and he was later implicated in eight other robberies in the Houston area, court documents state.
“Jordan has a history of bizarre behavior, claiming at one point that Jesus Christ had endowed him with unique and superior abilities,” according to his TDCJ file. The file also shows that Jordan has a seventh-grade education, worked as a busboy and had one prior criminal conviction in 1973 for “robbery by assault.” He served two years in prison on that charge.
If Jordan is resentenced to life with the possibility of parole — the only option since life without the possibility of parole didn’t exist in Texas until 2005 — it doesn’t mean that he will be released immediately. He’s still convicted of capital murder and his case will have to go before a parole review board, which can deny him. However, a resentencing could allow for a move to a lower-security prison that can provide better medical care than he’s been receiving, Wolff said.
Once the death sentence was overturned last month, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare could have retried Jordan and again sought the death penalty but said he wouldn’t do so.
“As prosecutors, our duty is to seek justice — not to simply convict,” Teare said in an emailed statement after the Court of Appeals ruling in April. “After review of this defendant’s case, we have concluded his death sentence must be vacated. This is what justice looks like.”
“To be clear: the defendant’s conviction stands,” Teare added. “This outcome does not lessen the harm caused to Joe Williams’ family and friends. When a life is at stake, we must follow the law and ensure the process is fair.”
Wolff declined to comment on whether Jordan, who was 20 when the crime occurred, has family members he could move in with if he’s released from prison or if he’d be confined to a hospital or mental institution. “I will be advocating for his interests, and I think that his interests are to receive the best care possible in the least restrictive way possible,” Wolff said.
