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Star Telegram -- Texas still top state for the death penaltyBy Anna M. Tinsley December 31, 2011 With six executions scheduled for the first three months of 2012 -- and more than twice as many executions as any other state on the books last year -- Texas is poised to continue leading the nation in executions despite a nationwide slowdown in capital punishment. Despite dropping to a 15-year low in 2011, Texas continues to lead the nation in the number of executions with 13 even as questions are raised nationwide about the wrongful conviction of inmates and petitions call on the U.S. to abolish capital punishment. Last year, 43 prisoners were executed nationwide....READ MORE The Texas Tribune -- Appeals Court Orders Re-evaluation of 2 Death Row CasesBy Brandi Grissom December 15, 2011 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday ordered lower courts to review two death penalty cases that involved a psychologist who was reprimanded earlier this year for using questionable methods to determine whether defendants were intellectually competent enough to face capital punishment. "What we're seeing is a growing awareness on the part of the Court of Criminal Appeals for scientific integrity in criminal cases," said Kathryn Kase, interim executive director of the Texas Defender Services, which represents death row inmates. "The evidence of retardation in both of these cases is pretty compelling."...READ MORE The Atlantic.com -- The Looming Death of the Death PenaltyBy Andrew Cohen December 15, 2011 The year-end report by the folks at the Death Penalty Information Center tell more and more Americans what they already know in their hearts to be true: The death penalty experiment is failing yet again. Undermined by overzealous prosecutors, a hobby-horse for incurious politicians, too often taken unseriously by jurors and witnesses, capital punishment in America has devolved since 1976 into a costly, inaccurate, racially biased, and unseemly proposition. We clearly can't do it right, and more people are wondering whether we should continue doing it at all. The facts and figures of 2011 soberly reflect the nation's evolving perceptions of the problems inherent in the justice system's ultimate punishment. For decades, "death is different" has been the courtroom mantra of capital cases. But now, and with increasing clarity, "death is different" is becoming a discernible trend all across the country...READ MORE Houston Chronicle -- Harris death penalties show racial patternBy Lise Olsen November 14, 2011 The last white man to join death row from Harris County was a convicted serial killer in 2004. Since then, 12 of the last 13 men newly condemned to die have been black, a Houston Chronicle analysis of prison and prosecution records shows..Read More Reuters -- Texas court halts Skinner executionBy Corrie MacLaggan November 7, 2011 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday halted the execution of Henry Skinner, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, saying it wanted to take time to fully review changes in state law on DNA testing. Skinner, who was convicted of the 1993 New Year's Eve killings of his girlfriend and her two adult sons in Pampa, Texas, has maintained his innocence and sought DNA testing of crime scene evidence...Read More Amarillo Globe-News -- Pampa judge denies Skinner appealBy Bobby Cervantes November 3, 2011 Six days before Texas is scheduled to execute Hank Skinner, a Gray County judge has denied the convicted killer’s third attempt to test crime scene DNA evidence he contends will exonerate him. Judge Steven R. Emmert, of the 31st District Court in Gray County, did not explain his decision Thursday to deny Skinner’s DNA motion in his four-sentence judgment, according to records....Read More Star Telegram.com -- Appeals court overturns death penalty for Mansfield womanBy Dianna Hunt November 2, 2011 After a four-year legal fight, the state's highest criminal court has overturned the death penalty for Chelsea Lee Richardson for her capital murder conviction in the death of her boyfriend's parents in Mansfield. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an opinion today, agreeing with the trial judge that there was misconduct by then-prosecutor Mike Parrish when he withheld key evidence from the defense during the punishment phase of Richardson's trial. Her attorney, Robert Ford, said a deal has been reached with the Tarrant County District Attorney's office for Richardson, now 27, to receive a life sentence. Because she will be subject to the penal code that was in place in 2005, when she was convicted, she would be eligible for parole after serving 40 years
...Read More Philanthropedia-- Ranked Nonprofits: Local Criminal JusticeTexas Defender Service (TDS) was named one of the top 21 “high impact” local/state nonprofits in the United States! TDS was commended for the "amazing legal representation that it provides to individuals accused of capital crimes and its ability to reduce and reverse death sentences in Texas--a state that uses the death penalty more often than many others."
....Read More Please consider supporting TDS's important work by donating today ABC News -- Retired Justice John Paul Stevens on His ‘Wrong’ Vote on Texas Death Penalty CaseBy George Stephanopoulos September 28, 2011 Retired Justice John Paul Stevens is a man of few regrets from his nearly 35 years on the Supreme Court, except one – his 1976 vote to reinstate the death penalty. “I really think that I’ve thought over a lot of cases I’ve written over the years. And I really wouldn’t want to do any one of them over…With one exception,” he told me. “My vote in the Texas death case. And I think I do mention that in that case, I think that I came out wrong on that,” Stevens said...Read More New York Times -- Texas Death Row Kitchen Cooks Its Last ‘Last Meal’By Manny Fernandez September 22, 2011 For decades, Texas inmates scheduled to be executed had at least one thing to look forward to: a last meal. Earl Carl Heiselbetz Jr. ordered two breaded pork chops and three scrambled eggs in 2000. Frank Basil McFarland asked for a heaping portion of lettuce and four celery stalks in 1998. Doyle Skillern ate a sirloin steak in 1985.
But state prison officials decided on Thursday to end the practice of giving last meals to inmates about to be executed, their decision coming the day after they honored an elaborate meal request from Lawrence Russell Brewer, one of the men convicted in the 1998 racially motivated dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper...Read More Washington Post -- Supreme Court halts ex-Army recruiter’s Texas execution for 3rd time in rape-slaying of womanBy Associated Press September 20, 2011 A former Army recruiter who for the third time this year was hours away from his scheduled execution for the rape-slaying of a woman in Fort Worth nearly 10 years ago was granted yet another reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. Cleve Foster, 47, was set to die Tuesday evening in Huntsville...Read More New York Times -- Texas Execution Halted Amid Supreme Court ReviewBy ASSOCIATED PRESS September 16, 2011 A black man convicted of a double murder in Texas 16 years ago was at least temporarily spared from lethal injection when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his lawyers' claims that race played an improper role in his sentencing. The court on Thursday halted the execution for Duane Buck, 48, two hours
into a six-hour window when he could have been taken to the death
chamber. Texas officials, however, did not move forward with the
punishment while legal issues were pending. ...Read More El-Paso Times -- Serial Killer David Leonard Wood Attends Hearing on Expanded AppealBy Andriana M. Chavez September 10, 2011 Attorneys for convicted serial killer David Leonard Wood argued Tuesday that Wood is innocent in the deaths of six girls and women because recently conducted DNA tests were inconclusive or did not match his DNA. A
Dallas jury in 1992 convicted Wood of the murders of six teenage girls
and young women whose bodies were found buried in the Northeast El Paso
desert. All of them died in 1987 after Wood was paroled from prison for
the second time on sex-assault convictions...Read More Texas Monthly -- Innocence Found By Pamela Collof January 2011
Why did Anthony Graves spend eighteen years behind bars -- twelve of them on death row -- for a crime he did not commit? Read More Austin American Statesman -- Forget the messenger, focus on the flaws in criminal justice systemBy EDITORIAL BOARD December 5, 2010 It's unfortunate that the task of bringing a court challenge to test the
fairness of the Texas capital punishment system has fallen to John
Edward Green. It should be state officials and not an accused killer
leading the charge to fix the criminal justice system ... Read More Dallas Morning News -- The Six Best Arguments Against the Death Penalty in TexasBy Andrea Keilen December 2, 2010 Beginning Monday, December 6, at a hearing next week in a Harris County
District Court, expert witnesses will testify about the numerous flaws
that leave Texas' system riddled with errors, inherently unreliable, and
unconstitutional as applied. At the hearing, witnesses will testify about the following factors, which taken together, create an unacceptable risk of wrongful conviction in capital cases ... Read more |
