TCADP

On May 7, 2013, the State of Texas put Carroll Parr to death for the 2003 drug-related robbery and killing of Joel Dominguez in Waco.  It was the fifth execution to take place in Texas this year.  Read an account from the Associated Press.

Earlier in the day, a Galveston County jury sentenced Bartholomew Granger to death for the murder of 79-year-old Minnie Ray Sebolt outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in 2012.  According to the Associated Press, “Granger, 42, showed no remorse as he admitted opening fire on his daughter and running her over with his truck because she had testified against him in a sexual assault case, but he insisted he didn’t kill Sebolt. His daughter and her mother were among three women wounded in the attack.”  The trial was moved to Galveston so that jurors did not have to walk by the crime scene every day.

Read more about this case from the Beaumont Enterprise.

This is the first new death sentence imposed in Texas in 2013.  In 2012, Texas juries sentenced nine people to death.    View death sentences by county at http://tcadp.org/1976-2012-county-map/.

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Today, December 18, 2012, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) released its year-end report, The Death Penalty in 2012.  According to the report, the number of new death sentences in 2012 was the second lowest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.  Several states, including North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, did not impose any new death sentences this year.

For the second year in a row, 43 executions took place in the United States – just four states (Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Arizona) accounted for more than 75% of executions in 2012.

The report notes that for the eighth consecutive year, Texas executed more inmates than it sentenced to death, “foreshadowing a decline in executions in the future.”   Texas carried out 15 executions this year; nine individuals were sentenced to death.

Read the press release from DPIC.

Read the full report.

Read coverage by CNN, which also features a video clip of  Joel Osteen, Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, discussing his views on the death penalty.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, December 12, 2012

CONTACT: Kristin Houlé, Executive Director
512-441-1808 (office); 512-552-5948 (cell)
khoule@tcadp.org

Use of Death Penalty Geographically Isolated, Arbitrarily Imposed in Texas,
According to New Report by TCADP

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex led state in pursuit of the death penalty in 2012

(Austin, Texas) — More than half of all new death sentences were imposed in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex this year, while no new death sentences were imposed in Harris County for the third time in five years, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (TCADP) new report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review.

New death sentences in Texas have declined more than 75% since 2002 and remain near historic low levels in 2012.  To date this year, juries have condemned nine new individuals to death in Texas, a slight increase over 2011 and 2010, when new death sentences fell to their lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised death penalty statute in 1976.  The verdict in a capital murder trial in Brazos County, in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, has been delayed indefinitely pending a legal dispute over jury instructions.

Tarrant and Dallas Counties each accounted for two new death sentences and Johnson County accounted for one.  Dallas County now leads the state in new death sentences since 2008, accounting for nearly 20% of sentences imposed in the last five years.  Dallas County also led the state in executions, accounting for 5 of the 15 executions carried out this year.

“While most of Texas is moving away from the death penalty, the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex was a major outlier both in new death sentences and executions this year,” said Kristin Houlé, Executive Director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  “2012 exemplified the arbitrariness that pervades the death penalty system in Texas.  Not only does it remain geographically isolated to just a few jurisdictions statewide, but it continues to be applied in a haphazard and unfair way, particularly when it comes to individuals with intellectual disabilities or severe mental illness and people of color.”

Seven of the new death row inmates in 2012 are African-American, one is Hispanic, and one is a white female.  Over the last five years, nearly 75% of death sentences in Texas have been imposed on people of color – 46% African-American and 28% Hispanic.  In Dallas County, this pattern is even more pronounced – of the eight men sentenced to death there since 2008, five are African-American and two are Hispanic.

Of the 15 men executed in Texas this year, seven were African-American, four were Hispanic, and four were white.

“Although Texas is using the death penalty less, the state still uses it disproportionately on people of color,” said Kathryn Kase, Executive Director of the Texas Defender Service.  “This is a recurring problem and Texas’ failure to fix it demonstrates how broken its capital punishment system is.”

Troubling questions also persist regarding the arbitrary determination of who receives the ultimate punishment.  Cases involving individuals with comparable backgrounds or who presented similar legal arguments received vastly different treatment by the criminal justice system this year.

As one example of this arbitrariness, several death row inmates with diagnosed severe mental illnesses were scheduled for execution this year.  The executions of Steven Staley and Marcus Druery were halted pending unresolved issues related to their mental competency, while the execution of Jonathan Green, who reportedly suffered from schizophrenia, proceeded on October 10, 2012 after significant legal wrangling.

This disparate treatment was also evident in terms of issues related to intellectual disabilities.

Two inmates with recognized intellectual disabilities received reduced sentences and were removed from death row this year: Roosevelt Smith, convicted in 2007, and Anthony Pierce, who spent more than three decades on death row.  On the other hand, Marvin Wilson was executed on August 7, 2012 despite being diagnosed with an IQ of 61, well below the threshold of 70 for mental impairment.  His case created an international uproar and starkly illustrated the woefully inadequate and unscientific standards used by the State of Texas to determine which defendants with intellectual disabilities are protected from execution.

Other highlights of Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review:

• The State of Texas accounted for more than a third of U.S. executions this year, a smaller percentage than in the past but nearly three times as many as any other state.  Texas has executed a total of 492 people since 1982 – 253 executions have occurred during the administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry (2001 – present), more than any other governor in U.S. history.

• Six inmates scheduled for execution in 2012 received reprieves.  In addition, three execution dates were withdrawn.

• Death-qualified juries rejected the death penalty in the sentencing phase in four trials this year and instead opted for life in prison without the possibility of parole.  In all four cases, the jury determined that the defendant did not pose a future danger.  Over the last five years, death-qualified juries have rejected the death penalty in at least 20 capital murder trials.

• According to research by TCADP, the Texas death row population stands at its lowest level since 1989.  As of November 16, 2012, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice counted 289 death row inmates, which includes 10 women.

“Attitudes toward the death penalty are shifting as public confidence in the ultimate punishment continues to erode,” said Houlé.  “As we approach the start of the 83^rd Texas Legislature, TCADP urges concerned citizens and elected officials to confront the realities of this irreversible punishment and reconsider the efficacy and cost of the death penalty as a means of achieving justice.”

TCADP is a statewide, grassroots advocacy organization based in Austin.

Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review is available online at www.tcadp.org/TexasDeathPenaltyDevelopments2012.pdf.  Contact report author Kristin Houlé at khoule@tcadp.org to receive a copy directly via email.  See the report for tables illustrating Texas’ highest-use counties from 2008-2012, the race of defendants sentenced to death in the last five years, and additional graphs depicting recent trends.

See http://tcadp.org/2008-2012-new-death-sentences/ for a map of new death sentences by county from 2008 to 2012.

See http://tcadp.org/1976-2012-county-map/ for a map of death sentences by county from 1976 to 2012.

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Thirty years ago today, December 7, 1982, the State of Texas officially resumed executions, putting Charlie Brooks to death for the 1976 murder of David Gregory.  That was also the nation’s first execution by lethal injection, a new method concocted by a legislator and former chief medical examiner in Oklahoma.

Reverend Carroll Pickett, who served as the chaplain at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, spent all day with Charlie Brooks and stood at the foot of the gurney as he was executed.  In his memoir, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, he writes about the immediate aftermath of the execution:  “All that remained was an air of stunned silence – testimony to the fact that none of those who had witnessed penal history being made had really been prepared for what they had seen.”

Since 1982, the State of Texas has executed 492 people; 253 of these executions have occurred during the administration of Governor Rick Perry, more than any other governor in U.S. history.  This year, the State of Texas carried out 15 executions, a slight increase over last year and nearly three times as many as any other state in the country.

Yet Texas – along with the rest of the nation – is moving away from the death penalty.  New death sentences remain near record-low levels, and death-qualified juries have rejected this punishment in at least 18 trials in the past five years.

Use of the death penalty has been relegated to just a few jurisdictions statewide; in fact, only 11 counties in the entire state of Texas imposed new death sentences in the last two years.  These trends and other developments in 2012 appear in TCADP’s year-end report, scheduled to be released next week.

With your support, TCADP is educating Texans about the fatal flaws of our state’s death penalty system and equipping our members to serve as powerful citizen advocates for abolition.  Together, we are hastening the day that we mark the anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in Texas.

Thank you for your support and steadfast commitment to this issue.

p.s. We had the pleasure of meeting Charlie’s son Keith in Dallas on Tuesday. Keith’s family is holding a memorial service today in Fort Worth for Charlie Brooks. The memorial will be held from 12 to 3:00 p.m. at the Riverside Community Center, 3700 Belknap Street, Fort Worth. The program will include lunch and reflections. Everyone is welcome.

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Today, June 29, 2012, marks 40 years since the United States Supreme Court overturned all existing death penalty laws, ruling in the case of Furman vs. Georgia (1972) that the death penalty system, as it was being administered, was arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory.  At the time, Justice Potter Stewart said death sentences were as cruel and unusual as being “struck by lightning.” The Furman decision commuted the sentences of all 629 people on death row nationwide and sent states scrambling to revise their capital punishment statutes.

An America without the death penalty was short lived, however.  Just four years later, the Supreme Court totally reversed course and found that the new death penalty laws of several states (including Texas) “promised” to make the process fairer and less arbitrary.   The Court’s decision in Gregg vs. Georgia on July 2, 1976 declared the death penalty constitutional and paved the way for the resumption of executions.

In an opinion piece published this week in California Progress Report (“Time to Kill the Death Penalty?” June 28, 2012), marking the 40th anniversary of the Furman decision, Professor John J. Donohue, a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, writes that “Four decades later, there is plenty of evidence that the death penalty continues to be applied in an unfair manner and not a shred of evidence that the death penalty deters.”  He goes on to address the implications of a recent report from the National Research Council, which concluded that studies about deterrence “should not serve as a basis for policy decisions about capital punishment.”   Read the full opinion piece.

Read more about Furman vs. Georgia.

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The Fort Worth Star-Telegram features a new piece by regular columnist Bob Ray Sanders entitled “Time to End the Death Penalty in Texas” (April 10, 2012).  In his column, Sanders cites the recent DNA exonerations in Dallas County and legislative progress towards repealing the death penalty other states as two (among many) reasons to do away with the death penalty in Texas.   He also notes progress on this issue in Texas, including the decline in executions and new death sentences and a decreasing death row population.   Sanders writes that “those are all good signs, but not good enough.”  He goes on to say:

Many people acknowledge that we have a flawed justice system, and that’s understandable with any structure that depends on human judgment and actions.

 

But it is because of the fallibility of humans that we mortals should not be charged with deciding to take a life — the one thing we can never give back in case of a mistake — in the name of the state.

 

The progress toward abolishment of the death penalty has been steady, but slow. It’s now time to pick up the momentum.

 

I’m ready to see the movement gather steam, wage an all-out legal assault and awareness campaign to change these barbaric laws one state legislature at a time.

 

We are a nation that should be better than this. Let’s vow to end capital punishment in this country, now and forever.

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Juan Roberto Melendez-Colon visits at critical moment in Bexar County dialogue about the death penalty

Austin, Texas – Juan Roberto Melendez-Colon, who survived nearly 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, will share his story of wrongful conviction and ultimate exoneration with people of faith, students, and community members throughout San Antonio from April 12-15, 2012. “Death Penalty No Más” is sponsored by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), a statewide grassroots membership organization, with support from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

A native of Puerto Rico, Mr. Melendez spent 17 years, 8 months, and 1 day on Florida’s death row for a crime he did not commit. He was exonerated and released from death row on January 3, 2002 after the discovery of a long-forgotten transcript of a taped confession by the real killer. No physical evidence ever linked Mr. Melendez to the crime, and his conviction and death sentence hinged on the testimony of two questionable witnesses (one of those witnesses later recanted and the other is deceased).

Since 1973, 140 people – including 12 in Texas – have been exonerated from death rows nationwide due to evidence of their wrongful conviction. On May 2, 2012, Anthony Bartee, who was convicted in Bexar County of the 1996 murder of David Cook, may be put to death by the State of Texas, despite the fact that DNA testing ordered recently by State District Judge Mary Román has not been completed or considered by the courts.  Mr. Bartee has consistently maintained that although he was present at the house, he did not kill Mr. Cook.

“Mr. Melendez will be visiting Texas at a critical time, as concerns about the risk of wrongful conviction continue to call into question the reliability and fairness of the state’s death penalty system,” said Kristin Houlé, Executive Director of TCADP. “Increasingly diverse voices, including those of law enforcement, religious leaders, murder victim family members, and state legislators all have called for an end to this arbitrary and error-prone form of punishment.”

This tour is part of the Bexar County Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty, a community organizing effort that seeks to reframe the debate about the death penalty by focusing on its local impact as an expensive public policy that diverts scarce resources from effective crime prevention measures and meaningful victims’ services.

“Bexar County can be smart on crime while also using taxpayer dollars to invest in public safety and in the human resources of our community,” said Anita Grabowski, Bexar County Campaign Coordinator. “We see that attitudes toward the death penalty are shifting as public confidence in the ultimate form of punishment continues to erode. This tour aims to encourage dialogue among concerned citizens and community leaders about the wisdom, efficacy and virtue of the death penalty as a means of confronting crime and achieving justice.”

Since 1976, Bexar County juries have sentenced 75 people to death, the third-highest number among all counties in Texas, behind Harris and Dallas Counties. Of these death sentences, 36 have resulted in execution, 21 have been commuted to sentences other than death or otherwise removed from death row, and 18 are still pending. New death sentences in Bexar County have dropped in recent years, however, reflecting both statewide and national trends. Overall, new death sentences in Texas have declined more than 70% since 2003, and remained at a historic low level in 2011, when just eight people were sentenced to death statewide.

Bexar County has sentenced three people to death since 2007, with the most recent sentence in 2009. In this same time period, Bexar County juries rejected the death penalty in two capital murder trials, opting instead for the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The full schedule of events for “Death Penalty No Más” is available at http://tcadp.org/bexar-county-campaign/.

More information about Juan Melendez is available at http://www.voicesunited4justice.com/.

For more information about the tour, please contact Bexar County Campaign Coordinator Anita Grabowski at 512-496-6695 or anita@ncadp.org or TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houlé (512-441-1808 [office], 512-552-5948 [cell], or khoule@tcadp.org. To arrange an interview by phone or in person with Juan Melendez (English or Spanish), please contact Anita Grabowski.

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