Texas death penalties down but concerns are up

Death penalties in Texas were near record low levels, with juries sentencing fewer people to death and lower execution dates set this year, according to a recent report titled, "Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2022: The Year in Review."

Despite low numbers, the report said, executions set and carried out in 2022 raise concerns about the "fairness and utility of the death penalty." New death sentences in Texas have dropped 96% since the high peak of 1999, according to the report, adding that "prosecutors throughout the state have dropped the death penalty as a sentencing option in dozens of capital cases in recent years."

"Receiving a death sentence now amounts to a lethal lottery, one that does nothing to deter crime or promote public safety," Kristin Houlé Cuellar, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Executive Director and author of the report explained. "The randomness of capital punishment coupled with the egregiously flawed cases of those who remain on death row should compel Texans to abandon the death penalty altogether."

Since 1982, Texas has executed 578 inmates, 279 were during the years of 2001-2014 when Rick Perry was Governor. More executions were performed under Perry's administration than any other governor in U.S. history, the report said. However, there was also a peak in annual executions during the final year of Governor George W. Bush’s term in Texas when 40 people were put to death in 2000.

Inmates now on death row that were convicted during the era of prosecutorial excess showcase the failures in their cases and the death penalty, according to Cuellar. "As people who were sentenced to death 15, 20, or even 30 years ago now face execution, the rampant flaws and failures exemplifying an era of prosecutorial excess have been on stark display."

In 2022, 5 death row inmates have been executed and that number is a slight increase over 2020 when three inmates were executed that year and the same number in 2019, 3.

Source: Beaumont Enterprise, Staff, December 17, 2022

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