That's the title of Lise Olsen's report in today's Houston Chronicle. It's subtitled, "12 of the last 13 men condemned in the county have been black."
The last white man to join death row from Harris County was a convicted serial killer in 2004. Since then, 12 of the last 13 men newly condemned to die have been black, a Houston Chronicle analysis of prison and prosecution records shows.
The latest death sentence was handed down in October to a Hispanic.
The role of race in capital punishment has emerged repeatedly this year in the unsuccessful appeals by Duane Buck, an African-American from Houston convicted in a double murder. His 1997 sentencing featured testimony from a former prison psychiatrist who claimed blacks are more dangerous than whites.
Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos, elected as a reformer, has overseen decisions about whether to seek the death penalty since 2009. Her staff says the decisions are "race neutral" and "fact based."
"Whether to seek the death penalty in a capital murder case is the most solemn and profound decision that I must make," Lykos told the Chronicle. "It is agonizing and gut-wrenching."
As part of its review of the last seven years of death sentences, the Chronicle also examined capital cases first prosecuted in the 1980s and 1990s that were reviewed again after successful death row appeals. Since November 2004, five men have been re-sentenced to death - three white, one black and one Hispanic.
Robert Morrow, one of the county's busiest capital defense attorneys, called the string of consecutive African-Americans who received new death sentences from 2004-2011 startling. He said those numbers alone should prompt additional research and debate - especially since relatively few participate in the local decision-making process as jurors or as prosecutors.
"The more the defendant looks like you the harder it is to kill him - human nature being what it is," Morrow said. "It's something we have to be thinking about. It's an issue we never should get too far out of the front of our consciousness."
And:
Harris County has a long history of aggressive prosecution of capital cases.
More than a third of the state's current 305 death row inmates came from Harris County. So did half of the 121 black inmates on death row, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice data.
Blacks account for about half of recent murder arrests in Harris County. But they more often get charged with capital murder than whites or Hispanics, an analysis of more than 300 recent court cases by the Chronicle shows.
Related posts are in the race and geographic disparity indexes. University of Denver scholar Scott Phillips conducted a detailed examination of the role of race in Harris County death sentences. Earlier coverage of his scholarship begins at the link.
More on Duane Buck's case at the link.
Comments