DPIC Analysis: 13 Texas Death Warrants Raise Troubling Questions About U.S. Execution Practices

"The circumstances in which the warrants were issued raises troubling questions as to whether the state is executing the most morally culpable individuals for the worst of the worst crimes or the most vulnerable prisoners and prisoners who were provided the worst legal process."

In a year in which few states have carried out any executions, the aggressive execution practices of a single state — Texas — stand in sharp contrast. 

The Lone Star State has scheduled thirteen executions for the last five months of 2019, more than the rest of the country combined. And a DPIC review of the circumstances in which the warrants were issued raises troubling questions as to whether the state is executing the most morally culpable individuals for the worst of the worst crimes or the most vulnerable prisoners and prisoners who were provided the worst legal process.

The cases of the thirteen men scheduled for execution include two with strong claims of innocence, two whom authorities admit did not kill anyone but were sentenced to death under Texas’ controversial “law of parties,” and seven who exhibited significant mental or emotional vulnerabilities as a result of intellectual impairments/brain damage, serious mental illness, or chronic trauma. 

Three prisoners were age 21 or younger at the time of their crime. Four prisoners scheduled for execution had raised claims that their attorneys did not provide them with constitutionally adequate representation, and six received other forms of deficient legal process — including false testimony at their trials, trial before a racially or religiously biased judge, or execution dates that interfered with ongoing judicial review.

Texas’ aggressive execution schedule also illustrates its status as an outlier in its use of the death penalty and the stark differences in approach between the decisionmakers empowered to end prisoners’ lives and those evaluating whether new defendants should be sent to death row. 

Nationally, executions have remained near historic lows for the past five years, but Texas has carried out more than any other state. 

In 2018, Texas executed more prisoners than the rest of the United States combined and, if most of the scheduled executions go through, could do so again in 2019.

Prisoners sentenced to death in Texas are executed at a rate triple the national average. 

The process of rubberstamping — in which state court judges adopt as fact the pleadings submitted by prosecutors — is commonplace, and the Texas federal courts routinely defer to this state court “factfinding.” 

The Texas state and federal courts are also outliers in denying resources to defense counsel and in resisting enforcement of constitutional rights, even in the face of clear directives from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state’s disproportionate pace of executions continues even as prosecutors are seeking and capital juries are imposing significantly fewer new death sentences. 

New death sentences have fallen from an average of more than 40 per year in 1998-2000 to five per year in 2016-2018. Fewer death sentences have been imposed in Texas in the last five years than in any other five-year period in the modern era of capital punishment.

The table below presents key information about each of the individuals who are the subjects of the thirteen Texas death warrants. (For more detail on these cases, see Texas Schedules Thirteen Executions in Last Five Months of 2019.)

Click to enlarge

Source: DPIC, Staff, August 30, 2019

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde