Time for Texas to End Barbarous Death Penalty

Were it not for last minute action by a federal appeals court yesterday, August 15, 2019, the State of Texas would likely have executed Dexter Johnson for the murders of Maria Aparece and Huy Ngo in Harris County in 2006.  Earlier in the week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his motion for a stay of execution and his habeas petition without reviewing the merits of the claims he raised, including evidence of his intellectual disability and the false and misleading testimony of a State’s witness at trial. Unlike the Texas justices, the federal court did consider the evidence suggesting intellectual disability and sent the case back to state courts for further review on that issue.

Over the next four months 12 other Texas inmates are scheduled for execution. Next week, on Wednesday, August 21, the State of Texas is scheduled to execute Larry Swearingen. Since his conviction in 2000 he has consistently maintained his innocence of the 1998 murder of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Swearingen was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone, there is no forensic evidence tying him to the murder, nor eye witness testimony.

Since 1973, 166 people have been exonerated from death row on innocence grounds. The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. That’s about one exoneration for every hundred executed. How many of those who were executed weren’t exonerated simply because they didn’t have adequate representation? How many were like Larry Swearingen and just didn’t have an alibi to prove they didn’t commit the crime? Once again Texas is at risk of executing an innocent man. It is unacceptable for the state in service to the people to kill someone when so many doubts about his guilt exist.

Many supporters of the death penalty claim it is a deterrent however criminologists will tell you it isn’t because either the murder is committed in a moment of passion when such considerations aren’t in play or the perpetrator simply doesn’t believe they’ll get caught.

Other supporters of the death penalty claim it is the ultimate punishment but think about this a moment, as soon as the prisoner is executed they are free of all hunger, pain, loneliness, and fear. They no longer suffer punishment at all. Ask someone like Anthony Graves, a man who was exonerated after spending 18 years on death row, he’ll tell you that many of those with life sentences longed for execution so it would end their misery. If this was truly about punishment we’d just hand out life sentences knowing that the suffering would last for decades. A death sentence just lets the worst criminals off the hook while not giving society a chance to walk back injustices when innocent people are executed for crimes they didn’t commit.

Finally some death penalty supporters claim that it gives closure to the families of victims. In reality most families get no such closure regardless of the penalty imposed on the convicted individual. In fact some find peace in forgiving the murderer after meeting with them and sharing their grief.

Since none of the so-called justifications for the death penalty actually exist neither should the death penalty. It is time for Texas to join much of the rest of the United States and developed world and end the barbarous practice of state sanctioned murder.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 16, 2019

Execution of Wood unjustified

Supporters of the death penalty usually claim that it’s OK because only the worst killers are executed. In Texas that isn’t always the case and I’m not even considering the questionable convictions using tainted evidence or prosecutorial misconduct. No, I’m talking about what will happen in about two weeks. On August 24^th Texas is scheduled to execute a man who even the prosecution says didn’t kill anyone. If you think he’s guilty of some other heinous crime you’d be wrong.

How is that legal, you might ask. Texas criminal code includes something referred to as the “law of parties” wherein all those party to a crime are guilty to the same degree for whatever happens even if they didn’t actually participate in the act. In this case Jeff Wood was the getaway driver for a convenience store robbery in which the robber shot and killed the clerk. Wood wasn’t even in the building at the time of the crime. The actual shooter was executed more than a decade ago and Wood has been in prison for the last 18 years.

In addition to the question of culpability, there’s also the question of Wood’s competence to stand trial. The trial was initially postponed because a jury deemed Wood incompetent to stand trial. Wood has borderline intellectual functioning and a history of emotional issues. 

And then there’s the wildly speculative and inflammatory testimony of Dr. James Grigson, the infamous forensic psychiatrist known by many, including his peers, as “Dr. Death,” for testifying in nearly every death penalty case he appeared in that the defendant would present a future menace unless executed. It’s amazing that Grigson was even allowed to testify given that he’d been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association and its Texas counterpart for his unethical behavior long before he testified against Wood.

No one, not even his family, is suggesting that Wood wasn’t involved in the commission of a crime but if your support for the death penalty is due to your need for retribution how does executing Jeff Wood satisfy that need? If you consider yourself Christian; how does “an eye for an eye” square with the Christ’s teaching on forgiveness? If your view is that “it’s the law”; just remember that slavery was once the law of the land and in 1940’s Germany gassing Jews was legal.

Recent research shows that the victim’s families don’t feel the closure so often imagined when the culprit is executed. So the questions are: Why are we executing this man? What purpose does it serve?

To quote Gov. Greg Abbott: “Human life is not a commodity or an inconvenience. It is our most basic right. Without it, we have no other rights.”

Death Penalty Isn't Always Justice

Texas Democrats came out strongly for justice when the 2012 state convention added repeal of the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole to the party platform. Exonerated death row inmate Anthony Graves, who was nearly executed twice, spoke to a large audience explaining how our dysfunctional justice system continues to wrongfully execute innocent people.

Graves spoke from the heart and reminded attendees that you can’t undo an execution. He also told us that while outsiders think life without parole is getting off easy those in prison with such sentences don’t see it that way and many would rather face execution or in his words “take the needle”.

While people of color are disproportionately represented among those executed don’t think it can’t happen to middle aged white guys. Gov. Perry allowed Cameron Todd Willingham to be executed even after being presented with evidence that no crime had been committed at all.

We should also recognize that it costs four times as much to try a death penalty case and execute the convict as it does to jail someone for 40 years. That means we spend an awful lot of our criminal justice resources on killing someone when we could be protecting our families from violent crime by having more cops on the beat.

If you’re a small government, low tax conservative who believes our criminal justice system should be tough on crime wouldn’t it be more cost effective to stop this big government boondoggle?

Why spend $300,000 for insurance if we can simply choose to never need it?

A couple of weeks ago the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court voted to spend $300,000 of taxpayer money wastefully. Guadalupe County hasn’t had a death penalty case in over 30 years yet they approved an inter-local agreement with Lubbock County to provide public defenders in death penalty cases, essentially an insurance policy.

Guadalupe County need never have a death penalty case as the District Attorney can simply choose to ask for life in prison without the possibility of parole and save the people of this county the $300,000 insurance premium.

Whatever you think about the justifiability of the death penalty you should remember two things. It costs about four times as much to execute someone as it does to put them in prison for life due to the appeals and other legal fees. There’s every reason to believe that not only did Texas kill an innocent man when Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by lethal injection but as we now know there was no crime committed at all because the fire that killed his children was accidental and not arson.

Guadalupe County should never have a death penalty case and if we don’t then we have no reason to spend $300,000 of the citizen’s money. Call your County Commissioner and Judge Mike Wiggins and tell them how you feel.