Rick Casey reported in his column last week in the Houston Chronicle that Harris County, where Houston is located, did not send anyone to death row in 2008:

“First I learn that Houston’s air is getting cleaner.

Now I learn that we haven’t sentenced a single scumbag murderer to death this entire year.

This is not the city I signed up for.

In 1999, Houston displaced Los Angeles as the smoggiest city in the nation. This year we set a record low with only 16 days exceeding federal standards for ground-level ozone, smog’s main ingredient.

In 2003, the year I moved here, Houston sent nine murderers to death row.

That was 35 percent of the state’s death sentences that year, an amount that is more than twice our 16.5 percent share of the state’s population.

From 15 a year to zero

In 2004, we did even better, accounting for fully half of the 20 Texans who landed on death row.

Back in the 1990s, a less populous Harris County was even more prolific in sending murderers to meet their Maker — or not.

For the five years beginning in 1993, Harris County condemned more than 15 annually, contributing 39 percent of the state’s migration to death row.

But this year, which for capital crime trial purposes is basically over, we’ve contributed precisely zero percent to the state’s nation-leading cadre of dead men walking.

The Rosenthal factor?

I know what you’re thinking: That’s what happens when at the beginning of the year you banish the tough-on-crime likes of Chuck Rosenthal for minor indiscretions such as using his office computer for racist, romantic and obscene e-mails. (Separate e-mails, not racist, romantic and obscene all in one.)

And, oh yes, defying a federal judge’s direct order by erasing a couple of thousand other e-mails that could have proved even more entertaining.

But acting District Attorney Ken Magidson declines to take either credit or blame for the county’s paltry annual contribution to death row.

Magidson said he personally reviewed each capital crime to see if prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they met “the standards set by law” for the death penalty.

Only two death-penalty cases were presented to juries. In one of them, prosecutors agreed a plea bargain of 60 years during the trial. In the other one, the defendant was acquitted, more on which below.

Statistics from the past three years agree with Magidson’s suggestion that he wasn’t the difference. From 2005 through 2007, Harris County condemned just seven men, or 15 percent of the Texas total.

Prosecutors throughout the state appear to be seeking the death sentence less often. This year only 16 cases have come to trial (and one currently under way).

In addition, juries appear to be showing more skepticism. One found the accused not guilty. One jury hung on the question of guilt. Four juries found the accused guilty but chose life sentences without possibility of parole.

One was the jury in the sole Harris County death penalty case — that of Juan Quintero, an illegal immigrant convicted of shooting a police officer four times in the head during a traffic stop.

“When you have a Texas jury refusing to give the death penalty to an illegal immigrant who killed a cop — if the significance of that doesn’t speak volumes, nothing will, ” said David Dow, an anti-death penalty activist and professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Dow believes that Texas juries have joined the national mainstream. The recent passage in Texas of the sentence of life without parole offers some jurors a satisfying alternative to death (which is why Rosenthal and other Texas district attorneys long opposed it).

What’s more, say Dow and others, with the advent of highly publicized DNA-based exonerations, jurors across the country have become more concerned about imposing the death penalty.

In August, Michael Blair was released after 14 years on Texas death row. DNA evidence cleared him of the 1993 rape of a 7-year-old girl.

Dow notes that while Texas jurors seem to have joined the rest of the nation in increasing concern about the finality of the death penalty, state officials “seem to be uniquely stubborn.”

Last week we met with aides to two Austin City Council members and asked them to help us pass a death penalty resolution, either a moratorium or abolition resolution.

In California, there is an effort to get resolutions passed that would direct DAs not to seek death sentences. On Dec 8, the Berkeley City Council voted to adopt a Resolution for an End to Death Sentences in Alameda County. The resolution calls on the District Attorney to stop pursuing the death penalty and to focus instead on investing public resources in solving homicides, preventing violence, and expanding public safety programs.

This is a different strategy than ours in that the resolution urges the local Alameda DA not to seek death sentences, instead of urging the state legislature to adopt either a moratorium or abolition. We like that strategy and congratulate the people who worked for this success, although it might be a little too advanced for Texas.

The campaign is led by the Alameda County Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which has a nice website.

Here is the press release announcing the victory.

This strategy probably wouldn’t work in Texas, since California is somewhat more progressive than Texas on this issue. Last Spring in Travis County there was an election for DA, but only one candidate took the position of saying he would never seek any death sentences. He lost, but mainly because of a lack of funding to get his message out. The real disappointment was that none of the other three candidates would commit to taking the death penalty off the table permanently, which is a position that would be embraced by Austin voters if the Travis County DA would make the effort to educate the community on the disadvantages of seeking death sentences and the advantages of investing more public resources in solving homicides, preventing violence, and expanding public safety programs.

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment issued its final report yesterday. You can download the 156 page report here.

From the Annapolis Capital:

“The death penalty in Maryland is not uniform … It is a happenstance of color and jurisdiction,” said Benjamin Civiletti, a former U.S. attorney general and the commission chairman. “Systemically, the system does not treat one proportionately. It doesn’t treat similar crimes in a similar fashion.”

Among the report’s findings on Maryland’s death penalty:

Cases involving an African-American accused of killing a white person are 2.5 times more likely to get the death penalty than cases with a Caucasian person accused of killing someone who is also white.

Capital punishment has pronounced regional disparities. Someone in Baltimore County is almost 23 times more likely to get a death sentence than someone who committed a similar crime in Baltimore City.

Capital cases cost almost three times more than non-death penalty prosecution.

Maryland’s capital cases had an 80 percent reversal rate from 1995 to 2007.

“For all of these reasons – to eliminate racial and jurisdictional bias, to reduce unnecessary costs, to lessen the misery that capital cases force victims of family members to endure, to eliminate the risk that an innocent person can be convicted – the commission strongly recommends that capital punishment be abolished in Maryland,” the report says.

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment is a good example of how a Texas Commission on Capital Punishment should be composed. In the past, there have been proposals for a capital punishment commission in Texas, but the proposed commissions were smaller and less representative of the diversity of Texas than the commission in Maryland, which had 23 members that did represent the diversity of Maryland and included members representing the general public as well as the religious community.

Here is an excerpt from the bill that created the Maryland Commission.

(C) THE COMMISSION CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS:

(1) TWO MEMBERS OF THE SENATE OF MARYLAND, APPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND REFLECTING THE BROAD DIVERSITY OF VIEWS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT;

(2) TWO MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES, APPOINTED BY THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE AND REFLECTING THE BROAD DIVERSITY OF VIEWS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT;

(3) THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, OR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S DESIGNEE;

(4) ONE FORMER MEMBER OF THE JUDICIARY, APPOINTED BY THE CHIEF JUDGE OF THE COURT OF APPEALS;

(5) THE SECRETARY OF PUBLIC SAFETY AND CORRECTIONAL SERVICES, OR THE SECRETARY’S DESIGNEE;

(6) THE STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER, OR THE STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER’S DESIGNEE;

(7) A STATE’S ATTORNEY, DESIGNATED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE MARYLAND STATE’S ATTORNEYS’ ASSOCIATION WHO HAS PROSECUTED A DEATH PENALTY
CASE; AND

(8) THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS, APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR AND REFLECTING THE BROAD DIVERSITY OF VIEWS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, AND THE RACIAL, ETHNIC, GENDER, AND GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY OF THE STATE:

(I) A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MARYLAND CHIEFS OF POLICE ASSOCIATION;

(II) A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MARYLAND STATE LODGE FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE;

(III) A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER IN A STATE PRISON;

(IV) A FORMER STATE PRISONER WHO HAS BEEN EXONERATED OF THE CRIME FOR WHICH THE INDIVIDUAL WAS INCARCERATED;

(V) THREE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY; AND

(VI) SIX REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC, TO INCLUDE AT LEAST THREE FAMILY MEMBERS OF A MURDER VICTIM.

(D) THE GOVERNOR, THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF MARYLAND, AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES JOINTLY SHALL APPOINT THE CHAIR OF THE COMMISSION.

(E) THE COMMISSION SHALL HOLD PUBLIC HEARINGS.

Maryland Death Penalty Commission Final Report

The Death Penalty Information Center has issued its 2008 Year End Report on the Death Penalty.

We had a meeting today with aides to Austin City Council members Randi Shade and Lee Leffingwell to discuss our proposed resolution for a moratorium on executions. They told us they would discuss the issue with their bosses. Use this webform to send an email to all members of the Austin City Council telling them to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium. You can address your email: Dear Mayor Wynn and Members of the Austin City Council. Your one email will be sent to all council members and the mayor.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed by city councils across Texas. Local governments and local taxpayers are the most vulnerable of all levels of government and taxpayers when it comes to being held financially responsible when innocent people are wrongfully convicted. In 2003, the City of Austin paid out more than $14 million to Richard Danziger and Christopher Ochoa because the APD had coerced a false confession from Ochoa, who then implicated Danziger.

There have been 20 exonerations of innocent people in Dallas County, including 11 since the current DA, Craig Watkins, took office.

Nine people have been sent to Texas death row and later exonerated. At least three innocent people may have already been executed in Texas.

Local governments need to send a message to the Texas Legislature to address the problems in the system that can lead to innocent people being convicted and even put at risk of wrongful execution. If a person is wrongfully executed in Texas, local taxpayers may have to foot the bill for a wrongful death lawsuit. The Travis County Commissioners Court and the El Paso County Commissioners Court have already passed moratorium resolutions.

Our proposed resolution is here. Of course, we expect it to be changed before it is passed. We also presented them with a resolution to abolish the death penalty in case they wanted to choose to pass that resolution.

The Austin Human Rights Commission has already passed both a moratorium resolution and an abolition resolution on separate ocassions and has sent letters to all city council members saying that the AHRC would like the city council to address the issue with its own resolution. There were two members of the AHRC at today’s meeting, Lisa Scheps and Tom Davis. Delia Meyer, a TMN board member, who is also an Austin Human Rights Commissioner, has been pushing the issue on the AHRC. Also present were Scott Cobb, Hooman Hedayati and Alison Dieter.

The ACLU-TX Central Texas Chapter has also endorsed the resolution.

Proposed 2008 Austin City Council Moratorium Resolution