There's more today from the Dallas County District Attorney, following an interview with AP.
"Texas DA seeks death penalty review," is the AP interview, via CBS News. Here's an extended excerpt:
The Texas prosecutor leading an aggressive push to free wrongly imprisoned inmates, in a county where more than two dozen wrongful convictions have been overturned, is calling for a review of the capital punishment system in the nation's busiest death penalty state.
Craig Watkins' tenure as Dallas County's top prosecutor has earned him a national reputation. Now, as Watkins publicly acknowledges that his great-grandfather was executed in Texas almost 80 years ago, he called on state lawmakers to review death penalty procedures to ensure the punishment is fairly administered.
"I think it's a legitimate question to have, to ask: 'Have we executed someone that didn't commit the crime?'" Watkins said in an interview with The Associated Press.
After becoming district attorney in 2007, Watkins started a conviction integrity unit that has examined convictions and, in some cases, pushed for them to be overturned. Dallas County has exonerated 22 people through DNA evidence since 2001 — by far the most of any Texas county and more than all but two states. An additional five people have been exonerated outside of DNA testing. Most of those exonerations occurred during Watkins' tenure.
Texas has executed 55 inmates since 2009, including 13 last year, a 15-year low. Twelve former death row inmates have been freed since 1973.
"I think the reforms we've made in our criminal justice system are better than any other state in this country," Watkins said. "But we still need reforms. And so, I don't know if I'm the voice for that. I just know, here I am, and I have these experiences."
Among those experiences was hearing about the execution of his great-grandfather, Richard Johnson. According to state criminal records and news accounts, Johnson escaped from prison three times while serving a 35-year sentence for burglary, and he was charged with killing a man after his third escape. He was convicted of murder in October 1931 and executed in the electric chair in August 1932.
Watkins said he did not get a full explanation of what happened until he became district attorney. His grandmother, who was a young girl when her father was executed, still struggles with the story, according to Watkins and his mother, Paula.
Watkins says he opposes the death penalty on moral grounds but doesn't want those beliefs "pushed upon someone else." He has sought the death penalty at trial in nine cases, with eight death sentences received. An additional four death penalty cases are pending, according to his office. A panel within his office reviews possible death penalty cases and votes on whether to pursue it.
Today's Dallas Morning News reports, "For Dallas DA Watkins, views on death penalty may be changing again." It's by Ed Timms and Jennifer Emily.
Long before he divulged that his great-grandfather was executed by the state, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins struggled to define his views on the death penalty.
And that extraordinary revelation, made in passing at a news conference on Wednesday, may signal that Watkins is at it again.
Whether his philosophical pendulum is swinging back to his nearly lifelong opposition to the death penalty, or will come to rest at some point short of that, remains to be seen. But there’s little question that his remarks will re-energize debate about capital punishment and scrutiny of Watkins’ performance as the county’s top law enforcement officer.
The Dallas Morning News reported Watkins’ disclosure that “people don’t know that my great-grandfather was executed by this state” online Wednesday and in Thursday’s newspaper, but Watkins balked at explaining his reasons for making the information public.
He told The Associated Press in a story distributed Thursday that he was calling on state legislators to review death penalty procedures to ensure the punishment is fairly administered.
He called for reforms. “I don’t know if I’m the voice for that,” he told the AP. “I just know, here I am, and I have these experiences.”
He hinted at a similar role for himself in April 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection while at the same time one justice called for a national debate on the morality of the death penalty.
Watkins, the first black elected district attorney in Texas, told The News that the spark for such a debate “is going to come from someone in a district attorney’s seat.” Whether the second-term Democrat’s shifting record on the death penalty might detract from his role as a voice for reform is a question yet to be answered.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, a senior member of the Senate committee on criminal justice, said in a statement released Thursday that he favored scrutiny of the death penalty.
“I think more and more Texans — and people all over the country — are taking another look at the death penalty. I don’t foresee a time when major changes will occur, but the discussion has at least begun on how we make it more just and how we make it more certain that we actually have the right guy.”
"Dallas DA reveals his great grandfather was executed for a Wichita Falls murder," by Lynn Walker for the Wichita Falls Times Record News.
A murder that happened in Wichita Falls 81 years ago is now causing a ripple through arguments over the death penalty in Texas.
A judge in Dallas on Wednesday exonerated a man who spent 14 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Richard Miles, 36, was freed after evidence surfaced that another person committed the murder.
At that court hearing, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins expressed serious concerns over the use of the death penalty in Texas. Then Watkins dropped a bombshell — his great grandfather had been sent to the electric chair for committing a murder in Wichita Falls.
“We need to take a look at capital punishment as it relates to if we’re doing the right thing,” he said. "There’s a personal side of me. People don’t know that my great grandfather was executed by this state. And so that’s an issue we need to explore as it relates to our justice system — are we doing the right thing?”
Watkins’ great grandfather, Richard Johnson, was one of two men convicted in a killing that happened Sept. 9, 1931 on a sparsely-housed stretch of Dayton Street west of Brook Avenue.
Earlier coverage of Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins begins at the link.
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