A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released.
Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.
Attorney Ben Wolff, director of the Austin-based Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, appeared in court on Jordan’s behalf with attorney Guillermina Passa and mitigation specialist Jennifer Canzano.
Jordan, 70, is a quadriplegic and suffers from intellectual disabilities — his IQ has been tested at 56 and 60 — and schizophrenia. He had a stroke in 2010 and was moved from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where other death row prisoners are housed, to a maximum security medical unit in Huntsville.
“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 in May. “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 remains convicted of capital murder and if he’s not approved for compassionate release, his case will go before a parole review board, which can deny him. However, because he’s no longer on death row, he could be moved to a lower-security prison that can provide better medical care than he’s been receiving, Wolff said. If he’s approved for compassionate release, he could be sent to a private hospital or nursing home.
Wolff said he doesn’t know how long it will take for Jordan to be moved to a different facility. “It could be a couple of months; it could be six months,” he said, noting that he and the other attorneys from his office will continue advocating for Jordan. “We have been in touch with his family and we’ll let them know what happened in court.”
Whether Jordan remains in prison or is released to a care provider, the state of Texas will likely pick up the tab, Wolff said. Over almost five decades of Jordan’s incarceration, Texas taxpayers have spent more than $1 million just to house him, not to mention the medical bills. Wolff said his client should be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
“He’s 70 years old and has lots of medical ailments and neurological impairments,” Wolff said. “He’s a person who needs care. There’s a question of whether the Estelle Unit, whether he’s been for the better part of the last 16 years, is the best place for him, and I don’t think it is.”
Once Jordan’s 1978 death sentence was overturned in April, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare could have retried Jordan and again sought the death penalty but said he wouldn’t do so. The judge’s decision on Monday to resentence was essentially a formality, Wolff said, since the death penalty was off the table and life with the possibility of parole is the only other option under the law. Texas did not offer life without the possibility of parole until 2005.
Jordan had no legal representation for more than 30 years when Wolff’s took the case in 2024. Monday’s ruling was long overdue, the attorney said, noting that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared 38 years ago that Jordan was “so mentally ill that the Eighth Amendment precluded his execution.” At the time of Jordan’s original sentencing, the jury was not able to fully consider mitigating evidence related to mental illness that was presented by trial attorneys.
Wolff told the Houston Press in April that Jordan’s case is an example of how people with the greatest needs often fall through the cracks of the criminal justice system. “He was effectively warehoused and forgotten after everybody agreed he was incompetent to be executed,” Wolff said.
“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. 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.”
Jordan has been on death row longer than any other Texas inmate with one exception, Earvin Harvey 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.
Wolff said Jordan’s case demonstrates the flaws in the assigned counsel system. “Effectively, his prior lawyer, in the ‘80s, thought she won the case because he was found to be incompetent to be executed,” Wolff said. “She saved his life, and her representation more or less ended. In the meantime, there was no one on his case and no one to advocate for him.”
