## Facts

- Victor Hugo Saldano was convicted in Texas of capital murder and sentenced to death after a jury found he posed a “future dangerousness” risk under Texas’s special-issues sentencing scheme.
- At the punishment phase, the prosecution called psychologist Dr. Walter Quijano, who gave jurors a list of factors for predicting future dangerousness and included race as one factor.
- Quijano testified that Saldano was Hispanic, referenced minority overrepresentation in prison, and suggested a correlation between race/ethnicity and future dangerousness.
- In closing, the prosecutor urged jurors to apply Quijano’s listed factors when deciding future dangerousness.
- Defense counsel did not object to the race-related testimony; instead, counsel cross-examined Quijano and presented rebuttal evidence.
- On direct review, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed and held the race-based claim procedurally barred by the state contemporaneous-objection rule.
- In the Supreme Court, Texas (through its Solicitor General/Attorney General) confessed error, stating that introducing race as a future-dangerousness factor violated equal protection and due process.

## Issues

1. Whether a capital sentencing proceeding violates due process and equal protection when the State introduces expert testimony suggesting race or ethnicity is probative of future dangerousness.
2. Whether the Supreme Court should vacate and remand a state-court judgment that rested on a state procedural bar when the State confesses federal constitutional error.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
- The Court vacated the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
- The Court remanded for further consideration in light of Texas’s confession of error.
- The Court issued no full merits opinion and did not itself resolve the constitutional question in a written holding.

## Legal Principles

- A grant–vacate–remand order may issue when an intervening development—such as a party’s confession of error—warrants reconsideration of a lower-court judgment.
- A State’s use of a defendant’s race or ethnicity as evidence supporting a death-eligibility finding (here, future dangerousness) is treated by the State’s confession as incompatible with equal protection and due process in capital sentencing.
- When the State concedes that a capital sentence was obtained through constitutionally improper reliance on race, the lower court must reconsider the validity of the judgment notwithstanding its prior disposition.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court set aside Texas’s affirmance of Saldano’s death sentence and returned the case to the state court because Texas conceded that the prosecution’s use of race-based future-dangerousness testimony violated equal protection and due process, requiring renewed review of the sentence’s validity.


Saldano v. Texas, 530 U.S. 1212 (2000)