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Dallas County commissioners consider what a local death penalty moratorium could look like

Such a decision is ultimately up to Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, who said he supported the discussion but stopped short of saying he was on board with the commissioner’s plan.

A Dallas County commissioner raised the idea of putting a two-year local moratorium on the use of the death penalty to give the county time to study the financial, social and moral costs of the punishment.

Commissioner J.J. Koch proposed at Tuesday's meeting that Dallas County could save money by avoiding expensive death penalty trials, suggesting those funds be directed toward prosecuting human trafficking crimes. The issue could be revisited after two years, he said.

But such a decision would ultimately be up to the district attorney in Dallas County, John Creuzot, who said he supports the discussion but stopped short of saying he was on board with the commissioner’s plan.

District Attorney John Creuzot
District Attorney John Creuzot (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

“I'm in support of discussing the issue, and I commend [Koch] for having the courage to bring it up and start the discussion,” Creuzot said. “I can't commit myself to that because I don't know what's around the corner.”

Koch's proposal comes on the heels of Dallas County prosecutors' decision to seek the death penalty against serial murder suspect Billy Chemirmir, who is accused of smothering more than a dozen elderly women at senior living complexes around North Texas. 

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In Texas, capital murder carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. Prosecutors can also seek the death penalty for crimes they determine are especially heinous.

Koch said he understands why prosecutors would seek the death penalty in a case like Chemirmir’s, but if a death penalty moratorium were imposed, he would want to see a “hard moratorium.”

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“So that way, if Chemirmir were to pop up a year from now, and we’d made this decision, we wouldn’t be seeking the death penalty,” he said.

Creuzot said he supports the death penalty in cases where evidence shows a person would be a “continuing threat in the penal society,” he said.

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Death penalty cases are expensive — even long after a trial and conviction. Creuzot said his office is still involved in a 32-year-old case: the killing of Fred Finch and his wife, Mildred, by Kenneth Thomas.

Thomas has been sentenced to death twice — in 1987 and 2014 — and Texas' highest criminal court has thrown out the sentence both times. The court has ordered another sentencing hearing for Thomas so a jury can decide whether he is intellectually disabled. A date for that hearing has not been set, according to Dallas County court records.

If the goal of a death sentence is to create public safety, Creuzot said, a sentence of life in prison without parole can do the same with a much lower cost.

“It's becoming more and more difficult to sustain a death penalty conviction in the United States,” Creuzot said.

Shannon Edmonds, staff attorney with the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said he hadn’t heard of a county government proposing a local moratorium.

“The answer is not unique to the death penalty,” he said. “A commissioners court does not have an ability to issue a moratorium on sexual assault prosecutions or life sentences ... that's just not their job.”

In Texas, the governor can't impose a statewide moratorium on the death penalty, Edmonds said. That's not the case in other states, such as California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on the death penalty in March. 

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Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said if it were possible, he’d support a statewide moratorium on the death penalty to study the moral and financial questions of whether the punishment should be used.

Jenkins said he would support the district attorney putting a stop to the county’s use of the death penalty, but the decision would need to be left up to the DA.

Commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia voiced support for Koch’s idea. Commissioner Theresa Daniel said she was looking forward to discussions about the topic and said it was important to include the DA’s office and judges in those conversations.

District 2 Commissioner J.J. Koch listened during a meeting of The Dallas County...
District 2 Commissioner J.J. Koch listened during a meeting of The Dallas County Commissioners Court oin January.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Koch said the county wouldn’t try to force Creuzot’s hand on the issue. He said the county commissioners could pass a resolution supporting a moratorium, and they have final say over the budget for the DA’s office.

“We can’t do anything unilaterally,” he said. “It’s his department.”

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He suggested that the county use money saved from pursuing death penalty cases to prosecute human trafficking cases.

Creuzot said there are other areas of need in the DA's office, pointing to a grant for lawyers who handle child abuse cases that's about to run out. He said his budget requests to fund their positions after the grant have been denied.