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| Huntsville, Texas, the death penalty capital of the world |
Yet in Texas we hear only of executions — a seemingly endless stream. Are we really two different nations (yes, Texas was its own country once) with different capital destinies? Or are the rest of the states the canaries, and Texas the miner, as oxygen is sucked out of the American death penalty cave?
Texas, too, is less frequently imposing and carrying out the death penalty. In 1999, Texas juries returned an astounding 48 death sentences. Since 2008, however, Texas has annually sent fewer than 10 defendants to death row.
Executions in Texas have declined as well, from a high of 40 in 2000 to fewer than 20 since 2010. But Texas rightly has become the symbol of the modern American death penalty because of its extraordinary number of executions — accounting for more than 500 of the nation's 1,379 executions since 1977.
Indeed, Texas has executed at least four times more people than any other state, and more than all of the other death penalty states combined, excluding Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida and Missouri.
How did Texas become the leader of American executions?
Executions require something of a perfect storm. Prosecutors must seek death; defense lawyers must fail in their quest for a plea or a life sentence at trial; appellate judges must find the underlying trial to have been fundamentally fair; statewide prosecutors must defend the resulting death verdicts; post-conviction courts must sign off on the adequacy of representation and the conduct of prosecutors at trial; and executive officials must stand aside and permit the execution to go forward. While it rarely rains in Texas, this sort of perfect storm has become the norm rather than the exception.
Source: mySA, Jordan Steiker, For the Express-News, June 20, 2014