Darlene Gentry’s request for new murder trial pending more than 5 years (2025)

By TOMMY WITHERSPOON

It’s been almost six years since the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered additional hearings in convicted murderer Darlene Gentry’s efforts to win a new trial.

The hearings were conducted almost five years ago, but the judge who is charged with submitting his findings to the state’s highest criminal court has since been elected to the Court of Criminal Appeals and has yet to make his recommendations in the case.

Gentry, now 41, has been in prison eight years since her conviction in the 2005 shooting death of her husband, Keith Gentry, the father of their three sons.

Gentry’s oldest son has a pickup truck now and will turn 16 in June. Her younger boys will turn 13 and 12 this month, said their grandfather, Waymon Gentry, who is caring for the boys with their grandmother.

Waymon Gentry has long since lost his patience waiting for a ruling in his former daughter-in-law’s appeal. But he said Wednesday that as long as she remains locked up — where he said she belongs — there is no sense worrying about what might happen with the court’s ruling.

“I am just waiting to see what happens,” he said. “She is there, locked up, so I might as well not worry about it. I don’t see how in the world they could change anything.”

Richardson, a former adjunct law professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law, was elected to the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2014 but retained Gentry’s case and others he was appointed to hear.

Richardson said Wednesday that he could not discuss Gentry’s case. His findings now will be forwarded to the very court on which he sits, but he will not be allowed to participate in the final order.

Gentry is serving a 60-year prison term, convicted of shooting her husband in the head while he slept and then trying to stage the scene to make it appear that he was shot by an intruder. Gentry told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that she was asleep down the hall with one of her sons who was not feeling well.

Court orders prevent Gentry from having any contact with her three sons, and Waymon Gentry said it has been a long time since the boys have asked about their mother.

“They know everything that has happened. They asked why she did it, and we told them we don’t know why,” Waymon Gentry said.

The boys last saw their mother when Darlene Gentry’s mother took them to the prison in Gatesville without authorization during the first year of her incarceration, Waymon Gentry said.

McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna recused his office from Gentry’s writ process because he consulted with Gentry when he was a defense attorney before he took office.

Former Brazos County District Attorney Bill Turner agreed to handle the writ proceedings for the state but later left office and turned the case over to John Jasuta, of Austin.

Those changes, plus Richardson’s busy schedule, slowed the case. Richardson was appointed to oversee the criminal case against former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, maintained a regular prison docket in South Texas and presided over high-profile murder cases. That was while he was running for a spot on the nine-member Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

But it is still hard to understand why the writ process has taken so long, Waymon Gentry and others have said.

“This case has taken quite awhile to get resolved, no question about that,” Richardson told the Tribune-Herald in September 2013. “We are under no deadlines now from the Court of Criminal Appeals, so as long as the defendant is not screaming that she needs to be out of prison, which she is not, then we are OK. But there have just been so many different players involved in this from day one.”

Gentry’s direct appeal has been rejected by Waco’s 10th Court of Appeals and the Court of Criminal Appeals.

6-year process

The writ process began almost six years ago, when Gentry filed a voluminous application for writ of habeas corpus, claiming a multitude of allegations that she said combined to deprive her of a fair trial.

Saying in June 2010 that Gentry “has alleged facts that, if true, might entitle her to relief. Additional facts are needed,” the state’s highest criminal court ordered hearings in 19th State District Court to hear allegations in Gentry’s writ application.

Gentry’s legal team — Stephanie Stevens, Anne Burnham and their volunteer innocence project law students from St. Mary’s Center for Legal and Social Justice — stopped short of saying Gentry is innocent. But they claim she was not afforded a fair trial because an incriminating videotape of Gentry searching a pond for the murder weapon was improperly admitted at trial.

Neither Stevens nor Burnham returned phone messages Wednesday.

The attorneys also have said that Gentry deserves a new trial because her trial attorneys were ineffective, in part, because they persuaded Gentry not to testify at her trial.

Gentry wanted to testify and she and her attorneys debated the issue before deciding against it, Stevens has said.

Asked how Gentry would have explained why she went wading knee-high into a chilly pond near Axtell after police found the murder weapon dumped there, Stevens said Gentry would have explained that upon hearing rumors around town that the murder weapon was thrown there, Gentry attempted to find it so she could bring it to police and aid in finding who killed her husband.

Unfortunately for Gentry, jurors viewed the videotape of her at the pond in a different light.

Gentry had inquired about buying the land on which the pond sat. She said she was excited because her young boys could fish there.

Trial testimony indicated Gentry dumped the gun there and then told the owner that she had changed her mind about the pond and asked if he would fill it in.

Suspicious of the request, the owner contacted police, who found the gun. Police asked the owner to tell Gentry he would have to drain the pond before filling it in. Hoping that Gentry would return to get the gun before the owner drained it, Texas Rangers hid a video camera in a wooded area near the pond and then waited for Gentry to return, which she did.

Officers placed a large stick to mark the spot where they found the gun in the pond.

Jurors watched in amazement as the hidden video showed Gentry walk to the edge of the water, look around to see if anyone was watching and then wade into the water and head straight for the stick.