"Death sentences have dropped sharply after life without parole became possible," appeared in the Sunday Fort Worth Star-Telegram. It's written by Aman Batheja and also contains several charts and tables.
And:While the debate over capital punishment rages anew in Texas, new inmates going to Death Row have hit a 35-year low as prosecutors are pushing for fewer death sentences and, many believe, juries have become less willing to give them.
Various factors have contributed to a stark decline in death sentences and a dramatic shake-up in the ranking of counties that use it the most.
The biggest game-changer appears to be the introduction of life without parole as an option for juries in 2005, according to several prosecutors and defense lawyers. The change in state law represented a huge shift for jurors in capital cases, who previously were responsible for choosing either the death penalty or a life sentence in which a convicted killer could be eligible for parole in 40 years.
"With life without parole being a viable option now, [juries] feel a lot more comfortable that that person is not going to be let out back into society," Tarrant County District Attorney Joe Shannon said. "We are probably waiving the death penalty more times than we used to because we’re trying to forecast the outcome of the case."
But because of the state’s growing list of exonerations via DNA evidence and other questionable convictions, some argue that juries are simply less willing to send someone to Death Row. State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, the author of the life-without-parole law, said prosecutors are trying to blame it for their troubles getting Texans to trust a scandal-ridden system.
"It isn’t life without parole that has weakened the death penalty," Lucio said. "It is a growing lack of belief that our system is fair."
In the four years since the introduction of life without parole, Texas death sentences have dropped 40 percent compared with the four years prior, state records show. The number of slayings each year in Texas stayed largely unchanged during that period, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Texas juries sentenced 13 people to death in 2008. Nine others have received death sentences this year, including Erick Davila, who was sentenced in February for gunning down a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother during a birthday party in southeast Fort Worth.
It’s a far cry from 15 years earlier, when juries sent 49 people to Death Row.
A competing theory for why death sentences have declined is that jurors have become more worried about sending an innocent person to Death Row.
Reports of exonerations have popped up regularly in the past three years. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’ office has helped obtain exonerations for 20 wrongfully convicted defendants in Dallas County.
A poll from Rasmussen Reports released Thursday found that 73 percent of Americans are at least somewhat concerned that some people may be executed for crimes they did not commit.
Researchers at the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit group that aids defense teams in death penalty cases, say that in capital murder trials in which prosecutors sought the death penalty, the chances of the jury delivering a death sentence have dropped below 50 percent this year. Anecdotally, lawyers say the chance of a death penalty conviction was much higher several years ago and throughout the 1990s.
Scott Phillips, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver who has studied the use of the death penalty, said death sentences have declined nationwide, suggesting that the option of life without parole is just part of the reason in Texas.
"People are obviously concerned about innocence," Phillips said. "People are concerned about cost. . . . People are concerned about racial disparity."
Alan Levy, the lead criminal prosecutor in the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, said he believes that reports of questionable cases have affected juries.
"It plays a big role," Levy said. "People are very skeptical."
The article has other data available at the LINK. Related articles are in the sentencing category index.
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