The title is Unequal Justice - Murderers on Probation. The multipart series will begin Sunday, which means it will become available tomorrow.
Texas is known worldwide for killing its killers. But a Dallas Morning News investigation has uncovered a flip side to the state's tough-on-crime image -- murderers who get the lightest sentence around, probation.
At least 120 murderers in Texas got probation from 2000 through 2006. Dallas County leads the state in the probation-for-murder phenomenon, and the greater Dallas area had 56 cases.
The newspaper studied only those homicide cases from 2000 through 2006 that resulted in murder sentences, not those in which charges were reduced. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty or no contest in deals with prosecutors. Juries convicted and sentenced most of the rest.
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