Among all U.S. counties, Dallas stands out for its aggressive infliction of the death penalty against people of color. According to a report released last fall by the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard Law School, of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., Dallas is just one of 16 that imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015. During that period, seven of the eight people Dallas sent to death row were African American, a number far disproportionate to the number of African-American homicide suspects.
This January, Faith Johnson became the first African-American woman to serve as Dallas County District Attorney; she is only the third African American to hold this office in the state of Texas. As Dallas's top prosecutor, Johnson takes the helm of an office that has failed the African-American community for generations.
Now the Dallas District Attorney's office is seeking the death penalty against Erbie Bowser, an African-American veteran who has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness: post-traumatic stress disorder. The Bowser case offers an opportunity for Johnson to change the way her office has historically treated African Americans accused of committing capital crimes.
The crime Bowser is accused of is horrific, and the loss of life is devastating. Bowser is accused of killing four people, including his wife, and wounding four others. But there are compelling mitigating circumstances that argue for a sentence less than death while still ensuring accountability. In 2013, the D.A.'s office agreed not to seek the death penalty in a nearly identical case involving a white defendant, William Palmer. Palmer stabbed his wife and both her parents to death while his wife's sister and her six-year-old hid in a closet.
Johnson has the discretion to also seek a life without parole sentence in the Bowser case. Doing so would send a strong message that Johnson is willing to break from the past by seeking an appropriate, fair sentence for Mr. Bowser.
African Americans have been disproportionately harmed by wrongful convictions, mass incarceration and an excessive use of the death penalty, as well as an effort to intentionally exclude African Americans from juries. Our voices on these issues have been sidelined and silenced all too often. The D.A's office can change this.
In the past, Dallas prosecutors have concealed exculpatory evidence and resorted to sloppy forensics, leading to the conviction of dozens of innocent people. Since 1989, 53 people have been exonerated of serious crimes in Dallas; 65 percent of these exonerees are African American. I am one of them. I was exonerated in 2009 after spending 12 years of my life behind bars as an innocent man. It is not a stretch to say that race played a role in my case; the furniture was the only other black presence in the courtroom.
Historically, African Americans have been intentionally excluded from serving on juries in Dallas. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court lambasted the D.A.'s office for deliberately striking 91 percent of eligible African American jurors in one death penalty case. The court observed that African-American people in Dallas were "almost categorically ... excluded from jury service," intentionally cut out of the process designed to serve as the people's check on our prosecutorial system.
When she was sworn in, Johnson promised "to represent the people of Dallas County with integrity and justice and fairness." I applaud Johnson's spoken commitment to represent all of us. It will take a leader with courage and conviction to follow through on this promise, but Johnson is well-positioned to become this leader. She should swiftly enact reforms that meaningfully depart from Dallas's racially-biased past. The Bowser case is a good place to start.
Christopher Scott was wrongfully convicted of murder in Dallas County in 1997. He was exonerated in 2009 and received more than $1 million in compensation for his wrongful conviction. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.