On Friday, January 27, 2012, jurors in Tarrant County sentenced Kwame Rockwell to death for the murder of a store clerk in 2010. The defense attorneys on this case, Tim Moore and Mark Daniel, asked jurors to consider giving Rockwell a sentence of life in prison without parole as an alternative to the death penalty. The day before the final verdict was given, Rockwell’s father had just one request for jurors, begging them to “Let him live,” and “Let God take care of this”. Read more in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Over the past five years, 51 death sentences have been imposed by juries in Texas, but these sentences have all come from only 23 of 254 counties. Tarrant County is one of the few counties that continues to pursue the death penalty in capital murder cases. Tarrant County juries have imposed five new death sentences in the past five years.
This is the first new death sentence imposed this year in Texas, but the 71st death sentence from Tarrant County since 1976. Last year, there were a total of eight new death sentences in Texas.
Read more about sentencing trends in TCADP’s 2011 annual report and view maps of Texas that depict sentencing information by county.