Bill Aleshire, an Austin attorney and former Travis County Judge, has written a post on the Burnt Orange Report that says voters should withhold their endorsements from Travis County District Attorney Candidates who refuse to say they will not use the death penalty.

This is a unique opportunity because the selection of the next District Attorney is practically confined to the Democratic Primary since there is no Republican candidate. Although the death penalty maintains broad support statewide, Democratic voters in Travis County can elect a D.A. who would professionally and competently enforce the law without using the death penalty.

The death penalty is not mandatory. The D.A. decides whether to seek the death penalty or not. Death penalty opponents have been practically beaten into submissive silence by the notion that stopping this inhumane practice is not politically feasible. Instead of debating an end to the death penalty, it has shifted to debating–can you believe it?–whether the death penalty should be administered “humanely.” That’s the same Orwellian nonsense as making bombs “smart.”

Don’t give up. The Democratic Primary voters could make a difference in how the next D.A. handles this issue. The criminal justice system, even in this allegedly progressive community, is not perfect, and innocent people can be convicted, particularly if their ultimate fate on appeal is dependent on the likes of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals who would close their doors rather than give a death-row inmate 15 minutes extra to file an appeal.

In 2003, at the urging of Texas Moratorium Newtwork, the Travis County Commissioners Court passed a resolution endorsing a moratorium on the death penalty, which made Travis County the first county government in Texas to urge a stop to executions. The next DA has a chance to put that earlier endorsement by the Commissioners into effect by putting into place a policy that at least during the first term in office of the next Travis County DA, there will be no new death sentences sought.

Jeanette Popp spoke on the plaza of the Blackwell/Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin on Saturday, January 12. Popp urged the candidates for Travis County District Attorney to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Travis County by not seeking the death penalty in any capital trials and instead using life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty.

Jeanette Popp’s daughter Nancy DePriest was murdered in Austin in 1988.

March 4, 2008, the day of the primary in Travis County, would have been Nancy’s 40th birthday, if she had not been murdered.

Jeanette became intimately familiar with the many flaws of the Texas criminal justice system after two innocent men, Chris Ochoa and Richard Danziger, were wrongfully convicted of her daughter’s murder and spent 12 years in prison. They were exonerated and released in 2001. The City of Austin settled separate lawsuits with Danziger and Ochoa for $9 million and $5.3 million respectively in 2003. Danziger also settled with Travis County for $950,000. The actual killer, Achim Marino, was convicted in October 2002.

“The death penalty system in Texas is broken. The next DA in Travis County should reflect how the Travis County community’s views on the death penalty have evolved in recent years and pledge that for now the death penalty is off the table within Travis County”, said Scott Cobb of Texas Moratorium Network. “If we want to slow down the number of executions in Texas and reduce the risk of executing an innocent person, we need to elect a district attorney who will pledge to impose a moratorium on seeking new death sentences and a moratorium on setting execution dates for cases with existing death sentences. Certainly a DA candidate in Travis County who makes such a pledge will find a rich reward of votes in the Democratic primary”, said Cobb.

Media Advisory

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 11, 2008

CONTACT: Scott Cobb, President, Texas Moratorium Network

512-689-1544 scottcobb99@gmail.com

Two Mothers of Travis County Murder Victims to Speak at Press Conference Saturday January 12

Jeanette Popp and Martha Cotera Will Urge All Four Travis County District Attorney Candidates to Support a Moratorium on the Death Penalty

A press conference with Jeanette Popp and Martha Cotera will be held on the plaza at the Blackwell/Thurman Criminal Justice Center at 509 West 11th Street in Austin on Saturday, January 12, at 12:15 pm. Popp and Cotera will urge the candidates for Travis County District Attorney to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Travis County by not seeking the death penalty in any capital trials and instead using life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty.

Martha Cotera’s 25-year-old son Juan Javier was murdered in a carjacking and drowning in Austin in 1997. Martha opposed the death penalty for her son’s killers.

Jeanette Popp’s daughter Nancy DePriest was murdered in Austin in 1988. Jeanette became intimately familiar with the many flaws of the Texas criminal justice system after two innocent men, Chris Ochoa and Richard Danziger, were wrongfully convicted of her daughter’s murder and spent 12 years in prison. They were exonerated and released in 2001. The City of Austin settled separate lawsuits with Danziger and Ochoa for $9 million and $5.3 million respectively in 2003. Danziger also settled with Travis County for $950,000. The actual killer, Achim Marino, was convicted in October 2002.

“The death penalty system in Texas is broken. The next DA in Travis County should reflect how the Travis County community’s views on the death penalty have evolved in recent years and pledge that for now the death penalty is off the table within Travis County”, said Scott Cobb of Texas Moratorium Network. “If we want to slow down the number of executions in Texas and reduce the risk of executing an innocent person, we need to elect a district attorney who will pledge to impose a moratorium on seeking new death sentences and a moratorium on setting execution dates for cases with existing death sentences. Certainly a DA candidate in Travis County who makes such a pledge will find a rich reward of votes in the Democratic primary”, said Cobb.

What: Press conference with Jeanette Popp and Martha Cotera
Where: Plaza at Blackwell/Thurman Criminal Justice Center
Address: 509 West 11th Street, Austin.
Date: Saturday, January 12, 2008
Time: 12:15 pm

We have posted already on the first two candidates who filed for Travis County District Attorney, Rick Reed and Gary Cobb (read that first post here). Now the field is complete after two other candidates joined the race, Rosemary Lehmberg and Mindy Montford.

A couple of us from TMN were at the meeting Thursday of the Capital City Young Democrats and we heard two of the DA candidates speak on the campaign trail for the first time. Rick Reed and Rosemary Lehmberg were both in attendance and each spoke for 3 minutes, along with candidates for various other races. This is going to be an exciting race, for one reason all the candidates are likely to be good at public speaking since all of them are lawyers with lots of trial experience. The winner is likely to be the one that Travis County voters perceive as most closely reflecting their progressive values and priorities. This is likely to be a year when voters demand “change”, so we will see which of the candidates runs the most “change” oriented campaign.

For fun, some presidential race comparisons

Since the race is only just started and we don’t have much to go on yet, let’s play the game of making some broad comparisons to the presidential race.

Lehmberg is a woman and because she was Earle’s top assistant, she is the most closely identified with Earle, so she might be perceived as the most “establishment” candidate, sort of how Hillary Clinton is perceived in the presidential race. Of course, some of the wind went out of the Clinton “most experienced” based campaign in Iowa, where “change” was what the voters seemed to want. Can Lehmberg craft a campaign based on “most experienced” and also “change”.

A friend of ours said they ran into Gary Cobb at the annual dinner of the Texas Civil Rights Project recently and they had a conversation that indicated Cobb might be a “change” candidate, but so far, we haven’t heard any public comments from Cobb that would confirm he is the “change” candidate. Of course, there hasn’t been much reporting on the race at all yet in the media to really judge anybody at this point. That conversation at the TCRP dinner we heard about was promising though. More later.

So, if it works out that Lehmberg is the Clinton-like establishment candidate, and Cobb gets compared to Obama, and not just because he is also African-American but if he picks up on the “change” theme that is central to the Obama campaign, what about the other two?

Rick Reed might have to be the John Edwards of the DA race if he is going to compete. Meaning, he should run the kind of populist-themed campaign that Edwards has been running. Both Edwards and Obama are identified with “change”, but in Edwards many people have perceived a slightly more progressive stance on some issues compared to Obama. That is what has kept Edwards in the race. So, Reed could take a cue from Edwards and would probably do well if he runs as progressively as the Edwards campaign has done. Hint, hint to Reed: if you want to appeal to progressives in the Democratic primary, be the first candidate to endorse a moratorium on death penalty prosecutions.

That leaves Montford, who so far seems to be the most conservative person in the race. Maybe she is the Lieberman of the race. Ha Ha. Lieberman is the formerly Democratic Senator who lost a Democratic primary because of his support for the Iraq war, but won re-election to the Senate as an independent and now has endorsed McCain for president. The Statesman said Montford “worked in the Harris County district attorney’s office before becoming a felony prosecutor here in 1999.” The Harris County DA’s office is one of the most pro-death penalty, scandal plagued DA offices in the nation, so she has got some explaining to do about what she learned there. We hope she took some sort of delousing bath after leaving the Harris County DA’s office.

Race for the First Website

Gary Cobb has won the race for the first DA candidate to have a complete website up. His website does not allow you to bookmark specific pages, though, which is kind of annoying. His intro page is also annoying, so you will probably end up hitting “skip” on the intro if you go to his site more than once. He has an impressive list of supporters, (we would link to the list, but his site doesn’t let us link to specific pages). One of his supporters is a well-known Austin progressive, Jim Harrington of the before-mentioned TCRP.

Reed comes in second in getting something up on the web. It’s not much yet, but “check back in a few days for more information.” He does have a donation link up, which can be directly linked to.

Montford has a one page site up that says “COMING SOON! Please watch this space for upcoming announcements”.

Lehmberg doesn’t have anything up so far, although there is a domain name that was created on Dec 27 and now points to a wordpress theme at http://rosemarylehmberg.com/. Don’t know if that is where her official site will be, but so far it is the only sign of any website for her.

We didn’t take out the video camera at the CCYD meeting, because we thought we would let the candidates get their feet wet on the campaign trail before we put them on YouTube, but they can be warned, next time we see them speak, we are probably going to have a clip to post afterwards.

The New York Times has an article today “Executions Decline Elsewhere, but Texas Holds Steady” that explains why district attorney elections in 2008 in Travis County and Harris County, as well as other Texas counties, are so important in the effort to slow down or stop executions in a flawed Texas capital punishment system that puts innocent people at risk of execution.

Unlike other states where the number of executions have declined, in Texas execution dates are set by aggressive district attorneys asking convicting courts to set the date. If we want to slow down the number of executions in Texas, we need to elect district attorneys who will pledge to impose a moratorium on seeking new death sentences and a moratorium on setting execution dates for existing death sentences.

Adam Liptak writes in the NYT:

This year’s death-penalty bombshells — a federal moratorium, a state abolition and the smallest number of executions in more than a decade — have masked what may be the most significant and lasting development. For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.

Over the past three decades, the proportion of executions nationwide performed in Texas has held relatively steady, averaging 37 percent. Only once before, in 1986, has the state accounted for even a slight majority of the executions, and that was in a year with only 18 executions nationwide.

But this year, enthusiasm for executions outside of Texas dropped sharply. Of last year’s 42 executions, 26 were in Texas. The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people. Many legal experts say that trend is likely to continue.

Indeed, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who has represented death row inmates, the day is not far off when essentially all executions in the United States will take place in Texas.

“The reason that Texas will end up monopolizing executions,” he said, “is because every other state will eliminate it de jure, as New Jersey did, or de facto, as other states have.”

The article goes on to point out that death sentences are declining here in Texas as they have been across the country:

In the 10 years ending in 2004, Texas condemned an average of 34 prisoners each year — about 15 percent of the national total. In the last three years, as the number of death sentences nationwide dropped significantly, from almost 300 in 1998 to about 110 in 2007, the number in Texas has dropped along with it, to 13 — or 12 percent.

The big difference though is that in Texas execution dates are set by convicting courts at the request of district attorneys and in Texas there are some DAs who set lots of execution dates.

“Any sane prosecutor who is involved in capital litigation will really be ambivalent about it,” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. He said the families of murder victims suffer needless anguish during what can be decades of litigation and multiple retrials.

“We’re seeing fewer executions,” Mr. Marquis added. “We’re seeing fewer people sentenced to death. People really do question capital punishment. The whole idea of exoneration has really penetrated popular culture.”

As a consequence, Mr. Dieter said, “we’re simply not regularly using the death penalty as a country.”

So while the number of executions in Texas been relatively constant, averaging 23, the state’s share of total executions nationwide has steadily increased: from 32 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2007.