Last week, the United States reached a horrendous milestone: The 1,600th execution in the “modern” era of the death penalty (since 1976). The Death Penalty Information Center notes that this is despite public opinion polls showing growing concerns about the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty and declining support for its use. Texas accounts for an astonishing 590 of those executions – more than one-third of the total.
On October 1, 2024, Texas carried out its 591st execution, putting Garcia White to death after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his motions for a stay of execution. White was convicted and sentenced to death in Harris County in 1996 for the murders of 16-year-old twins Bernette and Annette Edwards in 1989 in their home in Houston. Their mother, Bonita, was killed in the same incident, but White was not tried for that crime. The murders went unsolved for six years.
Harris County juries have sentenced nearly 300 people to death since 1974. In the 1990s, they routinely sent as many as 15 people to death row each year. Texas has executed 135 people who were convicted in Harris County, and more than one-third of the state’s current death row population comes from that one county.
The execution of Garcia White was the fifth in Texas this year and the second involving someone convicted in Harris County. Read more about his case from the Texas Tribune and the Associated Press.
To date this year, there have been 19 executions nationwide, including the five in Texas. Executions have occurred in seven other states: Alabama (four); Florida (one); Georgia (one); Missouri (three); Oklahoma (three); South Carolina (one); and Utah (one). Texas does not have any executions scheduled in 2024 after October but has two set already in 2025.
Additional background on White’s case
White also faced execution in January 2015 but received a last-minute stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA).
White claimed that if certain newly discovered scientific evidence had been available at his 1996 trial, it would likely have changed the jury’s answers during its deliberations in the punishment phase. Ruling in White’s case in November 2016, the CCA found that Article 11.073, which requires an applicant to show that “had the scientific evidence been presented at trial, on the preponderance of the evidence the person would not have been convicted,” does not apply to the punishment phase of a capital murder trial. Three justices dissented from the opinion.
Judge Bert Richardson concurred with the opinion but argued that “…this is a harsh result, particularly in a death penalty case where the jury is often asked to evaluate expert scientific testimony and scientific evidence in assessing whether the death penalty is the proper punishment.” Judge Richardson opined that Article 11.073 should have been written to apply to both the guilt and punishment phases of a trial—at least a death penalty trial. Justices Hervey and Newell joined his concurrence.
The CCA again denied relief to White in September 2024 after he raised multiple claims, including that evidence of his intellectual disability should render him ineligible for the death penalty. White filed multiple cert petitions and motions for a stay of execution with the U.S. Supreme Court alleging “there is an intolerable risk that he is a person with intellectual disability yet has been deprived of counsel who is capable of proving it, free from the distortion of a deep-seated conflict of interest.” Late in the day on October 1, 2024, the Court declined to stop the execution.