[PAA-Discuss] [amnestyhouston] Texas falls out of love with the death penalty, embrace...

[Juli3 at aol.com]

TEXAS FALLS OUT OF LOVE WITH THE DEATH PENALTY, EMBRACES LIFE WITHOUT  
PAROLE
BY ERIC NICHOLSON - Texas Observer THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17,  2015

For what it's worth, Texas is still the death-penalty capital of  the United
States, which in turn employs capital punishment more frequently  than any
other western country. Only Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China —  none of
them shining beacons of human rights and individual liberty — kill  more
prisoners. In 2015, Texas executed 13 people, just less than half of  the 28
put to death nationwide.

But there's another way to frame the  issue: In 2015, Texas executed just 13
people, down from a peak of 40 in  2000. Even more striking, the state's
courts handed out only three death  sentences for the entire year, the 
lowest
number since Texas reintroduced  the death penalty in 1976, and went more
than nine months without issuing a  single one. Dallas, Harris and Tarrant
counties, collectively responsible  for about half of Texas' death row
population over the past four decades,  didn't condemn a single person to
death last year.

As highlighted by  a report released this week by the Texas Coalition to
Abolish the Death  Penalty, this is part of a long-term decline. The causes
are varied, says  Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender
Service.  High-profile exonerations like that of Anthony Graves, who spent
nearly two  decades on death row after being wrongfully convicted of
murdering six  people in Burleson County, have sowed doubts in the public
mind about the  infallibility of the criminal justice system. Ditto for the
expanding  recognition of deep flaws in forensic science, the unreliability
of  eyewitness testimony, and racial disparity in prosecution and  
sentencing.

Surprisingly enough, the death penalty in Texas is going  the way of the
electric chair.

"Prosecutors understand there's a  great deal of sensitivity on the part of
juries now in terms of innocence  issues and issues of lack of certainty,"
Kase says. Case in point: Four of  the seven juries from whom Texas
prosecutors sought the death penalty in  2015 opted for a lesser sentence, a
sharp reduction from prosecutors'  historic batting average of about 80
percent.

There's also the  matter of cost. Texas has become a leader in criminal
justice reform in no  small part because smaller prisons saves the state
money. So, for that  matter, does taking the death penalty off the table.
Capital cases, with  their endless appeals pursued by taxpayer-funded 
defense
lawyers, are  expensive, and prosecutors, particularly in smaller counties,
have become  increasingly reluctant to burden their jurisdictions with  the
cost.

But focusing only on bleeding-heart juries and  budget-minded prosecutors
would miss the biggest factor driving Texas away  from the death penalty.
Until a decade ago, Texas juries in capital cases  had two sentencing
options: death or life in prison with the distant (40  years) possibility of
parole. They almost invariably chose death. "I think  juries were looking 
for
certainty in the punishment that someone that they  convicted of capital
murder wouldn't harm anyone else," says Kristin Houlé,  TCADP's executive
director. A guarantee of 40 years behind bars just wasn't  certain enough.

Then, in 2005, Governor Rick Perry signed a bill  creating a sentence of 
life
without possibility of parole. The numbers  suggest that jurors have found
this to be a much more palatable  alternative, with the increase in life
without parole sentences more than  replacing the decrease in death
sentences. Death sentences peaked in 1999  at 48, then bounced between about
two and three dozen over the next five  years.

Life without parole took a couple of years to catch on, but  recent years
have averaged about 100 such sentences, according to Texas  Department of
Criminal Justice's annual statistical reports. (Note: TDCJ  doesn't report
new sentences, just the total number of inmates with that  sentence at the
end of the fiscal year. To find the number of new  sentences, we simply
subtracted one year's population from the next. So  it's possible, in the
case that prior inmates died in custody, that the  number of new sentences
could actually be higher.)

Together with  Texas' declining violent crime rate during this period, the
numbers suggest  that life without parole isn't merely being employed as a
replacement for  the death penalty; it's also being used in place of more
lenient sentences.  This raises its own set of issues. Many of the same
factors that make the  death penalty so problematic — racial bias, shoddy
science, overzealous  prosecutors — almost certainly apply to life sentences
as well, the  difference being that life sentences receive less scrutiny and
guarantee  fewer opportunities to appeal.

Death penalty opponents are OK with  that. "You have to look at what are our
alternatives here and right now in  Texas," Kase says. To her, life without
parole is the lesser evil. Houlé  acknowledges that the problems with the
death penalty are the "tip of the  iceberg in terms of broader failings of
the criminal justice system," but,  she says, "death is different." At least
with a life sentence, the criminal  justice system has the ability to go 
back
and correct its inevitable  mistakes.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-falls-out-of-love-with-the-death-pe
nalty-embraces-life-without-parole-7860819


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