Faith Leaders Express Outrage Over Tarrant County’s Racist Overuse of the Death Penalty
Dear Friends,
The days of racial terror lynchings may be over, but racism continues to infect the Tarrant County DA’s Office, influencing who it decides should face the death penalty. But local faith and civic leaders have had enough and are speaking out.
On Thursday, an inspiring group of faith and civic leaders gathered outside the Old Tarrant County Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth, Texas to express their deep moral concern over the racist and excessive use of capital charges by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office that we exposed in our new report, An Extreme Outlier: Race and the Death Penalty in Tarrant County, the Third Largest County in Texas.
A group of 17 faith leaders wrote a letter to the Tarrant County District Attorney expressing their outrage over how the office has become an extreme outlier in Texas, voraciously seeking the death penalty and especially targeting people of color. Some of these faith leaders, joined by civic leaders and other community members, hand-delivered the letter and a copy of the report to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday.
Racism has no place in our criminal legal system, especially when the ultimate punishment is on the line. For more on the unfolding situation in Tarrant County, you can watch our full coverage of the press conference here and listen to the words of our powerful speakers: Estelle Hebron-Jones, TDS’s Director of Special Projects; Rev. Ryon Price, Senior Pastor at Broadway Baptist Church; Dr. Rev. Jeremy Williams, Director of the Center for Theology and Justice at Brite Divinity School; Cantor Sheri Allen, co-founder of Makom Shelanu Congregation; and Pamela Young, Executive Director and lead liberation justice organizer at United Fort Worth.
You can also read more from KERA News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Fort Worth Report, Roland Martin Unfiltered, the Dallas Morning News, and the Dallas Observer.
With genuine thanks,
Burke Butler & Randi Chavez
Co-Executive Directors
Texas Defender Service
