A review of state prison data, court records shows Tarrant County has surpassed Dallas County in the number of people awaiting execution.
Jason Alan Thornburg showed no emotion as the judge read his death sentence aloud. A few jurors, who had decided the murderous former street preacher’s fate moments ago, brushed away tears. Relatives and friends of the victims let out sighs of relief.
The scene in a crowded Fort Worth courtroom last month marked the 6th time last year that a Texas jury condemned a man to die. Four of those death sentences came from North Texas counties, including 3 — Thornburg’s among them — from Tarrant County.
“We don’t often ask,” Phil Sorrells, a former judge who serves as Tarrant County’s Republican district attorney, wrote in a quarterly newsletter after Thornburg’s weekslong trial. “But in 2024, we asked juries 3 times to convict capital murderers and give them the death penalty.”
“3 times, they agreed.”
The 3 men — Thornburg, 44; Christopher Karon Turner, 48; and Paige Terrell Lawyer, 45 — are now at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where male death row inmates await execution. Thornburg’s arrival made Tarrant County the 2nd-highest county in the state for the number of people currently on death row, according to a review of a state prison roster and court records by The Dallas Morning News.
The review found at least 14 people on death row from Tarrant County. The new number surpassed Dallas County, which previously ranked 2nd with 13 people despite not sending anyone to death row since 2018.
Harris County, the state’s most populous county, led with more than 60 people on death row, according to figures from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reviewed by The News.
North Texas’ outsized role in adding to the state’s death row population last year comes after the nation’s busiest death chamber caught fresh attention.
In October, the Supreme Court of Texas halted the execution of Robert Roberson, a Palestine man convicted more than 20 years ago of killing his 2-year-old daughter. After a series of legal wrangles, the high court weighed in a novel request from state lawmakers, granting a House committee’s subpoena seeking Roberson’s testimony on a date 4 days after he was scheduled to die.
Roberson ultimately did not testify at the Capitol that day, but the nine-hour hearing drew a star-studded list of speakers, including “Dr. Phil” McGraw and novelist John Grisham.
The testimony was wide-reaching, with some speakers examining — and often questioning — evidence heard at Roberson’s trial. Others reflected on the implications of using the death penalty when there was some doubt about the outcome of the case, asking aloud if the courts had erred and whether Roberson’s execution would be true justice.
Critics of the hearing, including those who believe Roberson’s sentence is justified, were critical of what they saw as a play for public attention. They pointed to how courts, including the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, had affirmed the conviction. Among the most vocal was Attorney General Ken Paxton, who later publicized a sexual abuse allegation against Roberson — an accusation prosecutors had not presented during his capital murder trial.
The same high court that punted Roberson’s October execution date lifted its temporary block the following month, barring lawmakers from using the same maneuver in the future. The House committee that issued the life-saving subpoena reconvened Dec. 20 with plans to hear from Roberson. However, Paxton derailed those efforts by filing a request for a protective order that prevented Roberson from testifying.
Roberson’s case has brought renewed attention to Texas' death row, a system that leads the nation in executions and is marked by several historic firsts.
History of the death penalty in Texas
Capital punishment in Texas has a long history, dating back to Spanish and Mexican rule when it was rarely practiced. From 1836 to 1845, during the Texas Republic, the process was formalized for crimes like murder, rape and arson.
Racial biases influenced early death penalty laws, Paul M. Lucko, Professor Emeritus at Murray State University, wrote for the Texas State Historical Association. The death penalty was unequally applied to people of color, particularly African Americans.
As one of the nation’s leading lynching states, Texas saw its racial biases reflected in death penalty cases, Lucko wrote, with scholars linking this to a post-civil rights era political culture where “law and order” served as a “coded expression of persistent racism.”
In 1923, the state’s practice of public hangings ended. Executions were then conducted by the state, rather than counties, using an electric chair. This method was used until 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court paused executions — a moratorium the high court lifted 4 years later.
In 1976, as Texas was planning to resume executions with the electric chair, a Dallas television reporter working for KERA asked for permission to film and broadcast the execution. After the state declined, the reporter filed a lawsuit alongside the American Civil Liberties Union.
In early 1977, a federal judge in Dallas ruled executions could be televised. In response, state lawmakers decided to replace the electric chair with lethal injection, officially approving it as the new execution method later that year.
In 1982, the state executed Charlie Brooks, who had also been convicted in Tarrant County for the 1976 murder of a used car lot attendant. He was the 1st death row inmate in the U.S. to die by lethal injection.
Since 1976, Texas has ranked 1st in the number of executions carried out in the U.S.
Between 1977 and 2021, the state executed more than 570 people — more than 1/3 of the total executions carried out in the nation, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report for the year 2021, the latest available.
Texas is also unique in other ways compared to death penalty states. For example, the governor cannot impose a moratorium on executions and can only grant clemency with a favorable recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles — a group of members appointed by the governor.
While the governor is not required to follow the board’s advice, clemency cannot be granted without it.
The governor does have the independent authority to issue a 1-time, 30-day reprieve. As Roberson’s October execution date approached, there were increasing calls for Gov. Greg Abbott to use this authority.
In an Oct. 20 letter to the high court, Abbott’s general council said lawmakers “stepped out of line” because only the governor has the constitutional authority to delay an execution.
Texas death row, by the numbers
The rate of executions in Texas has declined since peaking in 2000 at 40 people that, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The number of executions annually has been in the single digits since 2016.
As of December, more than 170 people were on death row. The average age when they arrived was 31 years old, with the average current age being 50, according to the review by The News.
Most death row inmates are male, with 7 women currently on death row. The women are housed in the O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, west of Waco.
People of color make up the majority of people on death row, according to the review. Nearly 1/2 are Black, about 26% are Hispanic and 25% are white.
About 1/4 were involved in the deaths or injury of law enforcement or detention officers, according to the review.
North Texas juries sent 4 people to death row last year
The latest was rendered by a Tarrant County jury to Thornburg, the former street preacher, for the deaths of David Lueras, 42, Lauren Phillips, 34, and Maricruz Mathis, 33, in September 2021.
Thornburg lured the 3 into his motel room in Euless, where he killed them by slitting their throats or strangling them. He desecrated their bodies, dismembered them and packed the remains into bags and bins before taking them to Fort Worth and setting them on fire in a dumpster.
In November, another Tarrant County jury sentenced Turner to death. He was arrested in April 2020, days after authorities say he entered the Super Big Country Mart and robbed the store, killing owner Anwar Ali, 62, in the process.
In May, a jury in Johnson County, located south of Fort Worth, sentenced Jerry Elders to die. Elders, 43, was accused of killing Robin Waddell, 60, during a carjacking. He was fleeing the scene of a traffic stop where he shot and injured a Burleson police officer, prosecutors said.
In April, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Lawyer to die for strangling his former girlfriend, O’Tishae Womack, 30, and her 10-year-old daughter, Ka’Myria, to death. Days after the killings, Lawyer was arrested near Nashville, Tenn., and confessed to his uncle, prosecutors said.
The death penalty may be considered in at least 1 recent North Texas case.
During a news conference, the Ellis County sheriff voiced his support for seeking the death penalty — a decision left to local prosecutors — against Arron Semeion Thompson, 45, who is accused of choking and fatally beating a 28-year-old jail detention officer, Isaiah Bias, on Dec. 16 at the Ellis County jail.
What executions are scheduled in Texas?
4 executions, including 2 from North Texas, are scheduled for early 2025, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Steven Lawayne Nelson, 37, is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 5, 2025. He was convicted in Tarrant County for the killing of an Arlington pastor, Rev. Clint Dobson, 28, during a church robbery in 2011.
Richard Tabler, 45, is scheduled for execution on Feb. 13, 2025. He was convicted in Bell County, located south of Waco, for the 2004 fatal shootings of Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni, 25, and Haitham Zayed, 28, according to the Killeen Daily Herald.
David Leonard Wood, 67, is scheduled for execution on March 13, 2025. Dubbed the “Desert Killer,” he was convicted by a Dallas County jury in 1992 for murdering 6 women in their teens and early 20s, according to the El Paso Times. While the deaths were in El Paso County, the trial was held in Dallas.
Moises Sandoval Mendoza, 40, is scheduled for execution on April 23, 2025. He was convicted in Collin County for the 2004 killing of Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson, a young Farmersville mother whose body was found burned in a creek bed.
Source: Dallas Morning News, Staff, January 14, 2025
