According to the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Texas juries as of December 4, 2009 had returned the death sentence in just eight cases. That’s the lowest number over the last decade. The previous low was 11 death sentences in 2006. Since 2005, there has been a sharp decline in the number of death sentences returned each year over the previous five years..

            Texas has executed 447 inmates since it resumed putting people to death in 1982—by far the most in any state in the nation. With 112 executions, Harris County is the epicenter of the death penalty in Texas—a dubious distinction that can be attributed to a “convict-at-any-costs” political agenda maintained by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

            But there is reason to hope in Harris County. While 106 of the 332 inmates currently housed on Texas’ death row were convicted in the county, Harris County juries have returned just seven death sentences over the past four years—an obvious indication they are rejecting the wholesale killing machine mentality of the district attorney’s office.

            “2009 stands as a critical year in Texas’ experience with the death penalty,” said TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houle. “Concerns about innocence, arbitrariness, cost, and fairness generated unprecedented scrutiny of the administration of justice in the nation’s most active death penalty state. It is time for more elected officials to catch up with increasing public recognition that the Texas death penalty system is fatally flawed. We join with the swelling chorus of diverse voices, including those of law enforcement, religious leaders, murder victim family members, and state legislators, in calling for an end to this arbitrary and error-prone form of punishment.”

            Increasing media exposure of those individual wrongfully convicted in the Texas criminal justice system has probably been the most significant catalyst for the decline in jury-imposed death sentences in recent years. Of the 139 people exonerated from the nation’s death rows since 1973, eleven of them were in Texas—and two of the nine death row exonerations in 2009 were in Texas. These figures do not inspire public confidence in the death penalty system, especially in Texas where the death penalty is so frequently carried out. Texans are becoming more concerned that the state has or will execute an innocent person.

            The TCADP listed the following developments in the state’s death penalty system for 2009:

• In 2009, the State of Texas carried out 24 executions. Currently there are 332 inmates on death row in Texas—322 men and 10 women.
• Five inmates were resentenced to death in 2009.
• In four capital cases, juries rejected the death penalty and opted for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Levi King was spared a sentence of death in Lubbock County on October 8, 2009. His case, which had been moved from Gray County, cost nearly $1 million. King was already serving two consecutive life sentences in Missouri.
• Seven inmates scheduled for execution in 2009 received last-minute stays due to mitigating factors, new forensic evidence relating to innocence, or claims of mental retardation or mental illness. A comparable number of stays have been granted in recent years (six in 2008 and seven in 2007).
• Six inmates were removed permanently from death row in 2009; their sentences were commuted to life in prison.
• One inmate, Robert Lee Thompson, was executed despite a rare recommendation for clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

While bills have been introduced to abolish the death penalty in Texas, lawmakers have not indicated a serious inclination to join the ranks of the five other states (New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Connecticut) that abolished the death penalty in 2009. But the TCADP’s annual review at least offers a promise of hope.

http://www.tcadp.org/

Contact Kristin Houle at khoule@tcadp.org