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Posted on 05/18/2003 6:03:31 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Travis County calls for execution ban
05/18/2003
AUSTIN – In an unprecedented request to the Legislature, Travis County commissioners have joined a chorus of death penalty critics across the nation and asked state lawmakers to temporarily halt executions in Texas.
Led by Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe, the Commissioners Court made its county the first in the state to take such action, calling for a moratorium until the fairness of the capital punishment law can be assessed.
This year, Houston Mayor Lee Brown asked Gov. Rick Perry to postpone executions of some death row inmates from Harris County until new DNA testing could be conducted – but the governor rejected his request.
Legislators so far are turning a deaf ear to Travis County's plea, insisting that Texas – which has executed more people than any other state – has fairly administered its capital punishment statute. More than 300 people have been executed in Texas in the last two decades.
In pushing through a resolution seeking the death penalty moratorium, Mr. Biscoe cited the statistics often used by capital punishment critics in asserting the unfairness of the system. Mr. Biscoe, who is black, said there is public concern "that racial and socioeconomic factors influence the decisions to seek or impose the death penalty in Texas."
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"Death sentences are given almost exclusively to the poor," he said. "There is evidence of racial bias in the application of the death penalty in Texas, where more than 65 percent of people on death row are people of color."
He noted that most of the leading newspapers in Texas have editorialized for a moratorium and scores of city councils in major cities outside of Texas have passed moratorium resolutions. Also, he said, the former governors of Illinois and Maryland – both supporters of the death penalty – halted executions in their states because of questions over the accuracy and fairness of their capital punishment systems.
Unimpressed
The chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, which considers capital punishment bills, is unimpressed with the arguments advanced by Travis County.
"It is an insult to victims for them to politically posture and pass a resolution like that," said Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, who served as the sheriff of Travis County for nearly a decade before his election to the Legislature.
"In Texas, the decision to prosecute a capital case is made at the county level by county officials. They summon jurors to the county courthouse and county officials argue to those jurors to impose the death penalty," he said.
"Every law we pass on criminal justice, criminal laws and procedure rests with the sound discretion of the locally elected prosecutor. So they need to direct their concerns to their own county government and county officials if they feel there has been some injustice in Travis County."
Mr. Keel said Mr. Biscoe and the county commissioners have not pointed to any capital cases in Travis County that they believe were unjustly decided. Currently, five people convicted in Travis County are on death row.
"I was deeply involved in felony prosecutions in Travis County while I was sheriff and would be the first to be interested in knowing if there is some flaw in the system, but they have not pointed to any specific flaws," he said.
"They need to concentrate on county issues."
Exonerations
However, Mr. Biscoe noted that seven men who once served on death row in Texas were exonerated after their cases were examined, and an additional 100 have been freed from death row in other states since capital punishment was resumed in the United States more than 20 years ago.
"I think a moratorium is the right thing to do," he said, also citing "growing doubts" about the credibility of some crime labs in the state, particularly in Houston, where massive problems were discovered earlier this year.
In their resolution, Travis County officials asked for appointment of a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon commission to study administration of capital punishment in Texas and make recommendations to the next Legislature.
Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, has filed legislation to impose a moratorium on the death penalty and set up a state commission to study capital punishment in Texas. In filing the bill, the lawmaker called the current situation in Texas "shameful."
The measure was given a public hearing in a House committee last month, but it was left pending and will not be acted on in the current legislative session, which ends June 2.
Terrence Stutz is based in the Austin Bureau of The Dallas Morning News.
E-mail tstutz@dallasnews.com
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