"Tarrant County DA's decision in Kevan Dunlop murder case raises questions," is the title of Pamela Dunlop Gates' OpEd in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
A woman answers at her door to two men who barge in, steal her belongings and then shoot her in the head, killing her.
A small group of young men are playing Madden football on a flat-screen TV four men burst through the front door to rob the guy whose apartment they're at. They shoot one of the young men multiple times, killing him.
While a terrible burden to place upon anyone, it is the prosecutor's job to decide whether to seek the death penalty. How does a prosecutor decide whether a victim's life is worth enough to seek the death penalty? And how can the family of one victim accept the prosecutor's decision that the loss of their loved one is not worth pursuing the death penalty?
By now, I would have received the first of what would have been countless "crisis" calls to come over the next three years from my Kevan lamenting how his life was over because...
The week of Aug. 8 would have been Kevan's first week as a "1L" - a first-year law student - at my and my son's alma mater, Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law. My nephew's first call would have followed his having received the infamous "look-to-your-right-and-look-to-your-left" spiel told to TMSL first-year law students. They are told that of the three of them, only one would make it to the second year; the other two would be sent packing at the end of their first year. This "head-fake" is one of many tactics used to transform TMSL law school students into lawyers.
And:
Coping with Kevan's death has been exacerbated knowing that his life might not be as valued by the Tarrant County criminal justice system. While District Attorney Joe Shannon commendably sought and obtained capital murder indictments for the four young black men identified as Kevan's killers, he exercised his prosecutorial discretion to not seek the death penalty in their cases.
I expect the District Attorney to deny that Kevan's race influenced that decision. Hard as I try, though, I can come up with no other reasonable explanation.
Kevan's killing was committed with grave risk to the life of others, and while in the course of another serious crime -- burglary/robbery. Those charged with Kevan's murder (and the attempted murder of two other young black men who were gravely injured) do not fall in the category of defendants of any race least likely to get the death penalty: those with no prior record and the death was accidental, according to "The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides," by Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
The Star-Telegram reported that court records show Kevan's alleged killers all have criminal convictions in Tarrant County. Two were connected to a December 2010 shooting death of Victor Flores at an apartment complex on Fort Worth's west side a little more than two weeks before Kevan's death. The DA's office said there was not enough admissible evidence to take that case to trial.
Related posts are in the race index.
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