Ex-judge Tim Henderson appears from his days as a jurist in Oklahoma. (Screengrab via KWTV)
A murder conviction in Oklahoma has been overturned because the judge and one of the prosecutors on the case had a sexual relationship, a court of appeals in the Sooner State ruled on Thursday.
Robert Leon Hashagen III was convicted of murder in the first degree by jurors in then-Oklahoma County district judge Tim Henderson’s court on Feb. 2, 2021. The defendant was tried over a 2013 burglary gone awry that led to the death of 94-year-old gardener and birdwatcher Evelyn Goodall.
In September 2021, attorneys for Hashagen moved to have his conviction overturned after the judge admitted to having consensual “sexual conduct” with one of three prosecutors who tried the case.
“It is no exaggeration to state that the very integrity of the judiciary in Oklahoma is at stake here,” attorney James Lockard argued in a defense appellate brief. “If a man can be convicted and sentenced to die in prison at a trial before a judge and prosecutor who were literally in bed together, then no citizen of Oklahoma can or should expect to get a fair trial in any Oklahoma court.”
On Thursday, in a 3-2 opinion, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set aside Hashagen’s murder conviction – reversing and remanding the verdict – and ordered that a new trial be held.
“He’s now presumed innocent once again, and he gets to start this journey over again,” Clay Curtis, Hashagen’s defense attorney, said in an interview with Oklahoma City-based CBS affiliate KWTV.
The appellate effort argued six different points, the appeals court noted, but the judges only needed one to order a new trial.
The appeals court framed the winning argument as follows:
[W]hether Mr. Hashagen was deprived of a fundamentally fair trial of his guilt or innocence because he was tried before a judge who should have been disqualified from presiding over the case due to a previously undisclosed sexual relationship between the judge and one of the prosecutors in the case.
The majority opinion, penned by Judge William J. Musseman, Jr., relied on findings of fact and law determined during an evidentiary hearing held by District Court Judge Paul Hesse in November 2021.
That hearing established that Henderson and Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney K.C. “were involved in an undisclosed, sexual relationship from April of 2016 through summer of 2018.”
Additionally, and, in the majority’s opinion, “notably,” the Hesse hearing determined that Hashagen and his attorneys were unaware of the judge’s and prosecutor’s sexual relationship before or during the murder trial – and would have moved to have the judge recused if they had been aware of “the relationship between Henderson and K.C.”
Hesse also established that the prosecutor appeared at a pretrial conference for the state on Jan. 17, 2018, appeared at a motions hearing on Jan. 21, 2021, “where she was substantially involved” in argument questioning of witnesses and that she questioned multiple witnesses and provided the closing argument during the trial itself.
The appellate court wrote that “Hesse went on to find that the circumstances of an undisclosed past or current sexual relationship between a prosecutor and a judge sufficiently raised ‘unconstitutional potential for bias,”” and therefore, “a new trial is the only adequate remedy to redress” Hashagen’s denial of due process.
The state argued against a new trial, but the court found the trial judge had a “potential for bias” due to the relationship.
“We afford great deference to Judge Hesse’s findings upon remand and agree that the undisclosed relationship violated Hashagen’s due process rights,” the majority ruled. “[T]he structural error cannot be found harmless as the sexual relationship between the trial judge and prosecutor ‘affect[s] the conduct of the entire trial and cannot be separated from it for the purpose of analysis.’ Therefore, [Hashagen] is entitled to a new trial.”
The relationship at issue was one of many that led to the since-former judge’s resignation in April 2021.
Court documents previously reviewed by Law&Crime indicate that then-Oklahoma County district attorney David Prater requested an investigation based on allegations that Henderson “committed sexual battery on at least three female attorneys,” based on three separate allegations. That request occurred on March 31, 2021. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) also requested an investigation on April 2, 2021. Henderson resigned three days after the governor’s request.
Ultimately, the ex-jurist was never charged with a crime because state investigators could not substantiate the accusers’ allegations of sexual misconduct. The judge’s relationship with the prosecutor, however, could result in more sentences being overturned.
“Obviously, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people that appeared before Judge Henderson that did not know he had relationships with the DA’s office,” Curtis told KWTV. “A lot of things about the nature of that relationship that we believe inherently affected the fairness of that trial.”
Hashagen’s new trial date has yet to be set.
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