A couple of weeks ago Texas Moratorium Network received a call from a member of the editorial board of the The Dallas Morning News, which has long been known as one of Texas’ most conservative newspapers. They wanted to talk about the death penalty, saying they were working on a series of editorials on the issue without saying exactly what the gist of the articles would be. We spoke about how TMN believes committees in the Texas Legislature would probably be convinced to pass moratorium legislation, as they did in 2001, if they would only schedule a hearing on the issue and listen to the type of powerful testimony from innocent, exonerated people that convinced the committees in 2001 to support a moratorium.

Now, we know what the series was all about. They have been critics of the system for several years and have called for a moratorium on executions at least six times. Now for the first time, the DMN is calling for an end to the death penalty in Texas. Their main reason is that “it is both imperfect and irreversible”.

On Sunday, they began publishing a series of editorials on the issue. The second article is titled: “A death penalty slowdown, but not in Texas“. A viewpoint in favor of keeping the death penalty by a dissenting member of their board is also part of the series. On Monday, they will publish another article, “Texas’ Next Step: Lawmakers should enact a moratorium and study flaws in full light”.

An excerpt:

This board has lost confidence that the state of Texas can guarantee that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder. We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder.

That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty – because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible.

And more:

Some death penalty supporters acknowledge that innocents may have been and may yet be executed, but they argue that serving the greater good is worth risking that unfortunate outcome. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argues that the Byzantine appeals process effectively sifts innocent convicts from the great mass of guilty, and killing the small number who fall through is a risk he’s willing to live with. According to polls, most Texans are, too. But this editorial board is not.

Justice Scalia calls these innocents “an insignificant minimum.” But that minimum is not insignificant to the unjustly convicted death-row inmate. It is not insignificant to his or her family. The jurist’s verbiage concealsThis marks a transgression against the Western moral tradition, which establishes both the value of the individual and the wrongness of making an innocent suffer for the supposed good of the whole. Shedding innocent blood has been a scandal since Cain slew Abel – a crime for which, the Bible says, God spared the murderer, who remained under harsh judgment.

This newspaper’s death penalty position is based not on sympathy for vile murderers – who, many most agree, deserve to die for their crimes – but rather in the conviction that not even the just dispatch of 10, 100, or 1,000 of these wretches can remove the stain of innocent blood from our common moral fabric.

This is especially true given that our society can be adequately guarded from killers using bloodless means. In 2005, the Legislature gave juries the option of sentencing killers to life without parole.

The state holds in its hands the power of life and death. It is an awesome power, one that citizens of a democracy must approach in fear and trembling, and in full knowledge that the state’s justice system, like everything humanity touches, is fated to fall short of perfection. If we are doomed to err in matters of life and death, it is far better to err on the side of mercycaution. It is far better to err on the side of life. The state cannot impose death – an irrevocable sentence – with absolute certainty in all cases. Therefore the state should not impose it at all. • A New Standard: Now that Texas juries have a choice, and life without parole is the superior option. Coming tomorrow.

You can write a letter to the editor of the DMN praising them for their decision using their online form.

Monday at 10 AM, the Corrections Committee in the Texas House will consider HB 608, by Terri Hodge, relating to access to television by inmates confined by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in death row segregation.

Send an e-mail to all seven members of the House Committee on Corrections asking them to support HB 608.

The bill would allow TDCJ to set policy allowing inmates on death row to purchase TVs from the commissary. Why would you want TVs to be allowed on death row? A Houston Chronicle article from 2004 said

one supporter of TV on death row is Chase Riveland, the former director of the state prison systems in Washington and Colorado. He says some degree of access to television can be an important tool for keeping prisoners in line.

“In most jurisdictions, in order to have a television, an inmate has to have a good disciplinary record,” said Riveland, now a consultant who has 36 years of correctional experience.

“If the inmates know they’re going to lose their television if they misbehave, they’re going to be very cautious about it, especially if they’re in a lockdown situation (as in Texas), because that’s their only real connection with the real world.”

Riveland added that, in most other states, inmates’ families pay for the TV sets.

“I can’t even fathom why one wouldn’t want to use such an inexpensive tool,” he said.

He also suggests that the use of televisions on death row might actually ensure that inmates are mentally fit to be executed.

If kept in isolation, he said, “the odds of inmates becoming mentally ill are greatly enhanced.”

“That, of course, then leads to all types of challenges against whether you can execute them,” Riveland said. “And so, by not having televisions or other means of keeping them mentally alert, it may add to the taxpayer drain through additional litigation.”

Below is an op-ed on the issue from 2004.

TV valuable management tool for condemned

By Yolanda M. Torres
Opinion
Amarillo Globe News
Publication Date: 09/19/04

Clearly the editorial board did no research into this issue. The editorial evidences an absolute ignorance of the history of conditions on Texas’ death row, the management of a sensitive population and the effective use of management tools in a penal institution.

If the board had made even a minimal effort to research this issue, it would have learned that 37 of the 38 death-penalty states in the country, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, use television in one form or another – either in-cell or out-of-cell – as a management tool for its death-row prisoners.

These 37 states, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have successfully developed and implemented policies and practices that allow the use of television as a management tool while at the same time maintaining and increasing the safety of their employees and institutions.

These 37 states – and the BOP – have determined that television is a useful tool for controlling a sensitive population, promoting good behavior, modifying conduct and enhancing the security of its staff and institutions.

The male death-row population, when it was located at the Ellis Unit, had access to television. The men were divided into two groups: “work capable” and “non-work capable.” To achieve and maintain work capable status, prisoners had to maintain a clean disciplinary record. They were allowed to recreate in groups, attend worship services and work in the garment factory. They had access to television and were allowed to work with crafts and art supplies.

After the Martin Gurule escape from Ellis, the death row population was moved to Polunsky, its current unit. At Polunsky, the prisoners have been isolated, segregated and subjected to severe sensory deprivation. They are confined to single-man cells 23 hours a day. They eat in their cells. They are not allowed worship services. They are not permitted to work. No arts and crafts supplies are allowed.

These restrictions were put into effect after the Gurule escape, even though the the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s own internal review of the incident attributed the event to employee negligence. The investigation found that TDCJ employees failed to follow established policies and procedures that would have prevented the Gurule escape. It did not find that worship services, group recreation, the work program, television or any other program caused or contributed to the escape.

If the Globe-News editorial board had done any research into this issue, it would have learned that the management tools TDCJ uses to encourage and reward good behavior in genera population and administrative segregation prisoners are generally not applicable to the death row population. Loss of good time and loss of a mandatory date are meaningless. Death row inmates are not allowed contact visits, so that tool is not available. And reductions in line class and custody class do not affect them.

The only authorized tools available to TDCJ are restrictions (commissary, recreation and cell) and loss of level, which results in the temporary seizure of certain personal property and temporary limited visitation pending the prisoner’s promotion in level. Television is a powerful incentive to encourage death row prisoners to modify their behavior and conform to the rules and regulations of the unit.

If the editorial board had made any legitimate attempt to actually understand this issue, it also would have learned that, given this history, the current confinement status of the population, TDCJ’s interest in increasing the number of management tools, and the fact that all other death rows in the country allow prisoners to have television, the outright rejection of the issue, without any study or consideration, is not only arrogant and self-serving but absolutely confounding. Many legitimate TDCJ interests can and will be served if the TDCJ implements a sound policy that uses television access as a management tool to encourage and reward good behavior.

Finally, if the editorial board had a true interest in informed opinions, it would make a point of knowing its subject matter prior to the publication of its editorials and, in this case, it would have recognized that Christina Crain’s summary dismissal of the issue, without explanation, is strangely suspect.

Surely a real journalist would at least take the time to learn how it is that Christina Crain, a woman with absolutely no criminal justice experience, was appointed to chair the Texas Board of Criminal Justice in the first place, why she refuses to speak to the media directly about this matter, who directed the summary dismissal and how the prison administrators and guards who work with the death row population feel about Crain’s pandering to public misperception.

If the editorial board had done any of these things, it could have published an intelligent, educated editorial rather the piece that ran Sept. 9.

Yolanda M. Torres is the litigation director of the Prison and Jail Accountability Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Huntsville – Corner of 12th Street and Avenue I (in front of the Walls Unit) at 5:00 p.m.

Austin – At the Governor’s Mansion on the Lavaca St. side between 10th and 11th St. from 5:30 to 6:30 PM.

Beaumont – Diocese of Beaumont, Diocesan Pastoral Office, 703 Archie St. @ 4:00 p.m. on the day of an execution.

College Station – 5:30 to 6 PM, east of Texas A &M campus at the corner of Walton and Texas Ave. across the street from the main entrance.

Corpus Christi – at 6 PM in front of Incarnate Word Convent at 2910 Alameda Street

Dallas – 5:30 pm, at the SMU Women’s Center, 3116 Fondren Drive

Houston – Rotating Locations: April vigils will be held from 5:30 to 6:20 at St. Anne’s Catholic Community, corner of Westheimer and Shepherd. Parking is available from Westheimer just west of Shepherd.

Lewisville – St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church, 1897 W. Main Street. Peace & Justice Ministry conducts Vigils of Witness Against Capital Punishment at 6:00 pm on the day executions are scheduled in Texas.

McKinney – St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Community located at 110 St. Gabriel Way. We gather the last Saturday of the month between 6:00 to 6:30 to pray for those men/women scheduled to be executed in the next month and to remember the victims, their families, and all lives touched, including us as a society.

San Antonio (Site 1) – Archdiocese of San Antonio, in the St. Joseph Chapel at the Chancery, 2718 W. Woodlawn Ave. (1 mile east of Bandera Rd.) at 11:30 a.m. on the day of execution. Broadcast on Catholic Television of San Antonio (Time-Warner cable channel 15) at 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on the day of execution.

San Antonio (Site 2) – Main Plaza across from Bexar County Courthouse and San Fernando Cathedral – Noon

Spring – Prayer Vigil at 6 PM on evenings of executions at St Edward Catholic Community, 2601 Spring Stuebner Rd for the murder victim, for family and friends of the murder victim, the prison guards and correctional officers, for the family of the condemn man/woman, for the man/woman to be executed and to an end to the death penalty.

Last night several of us were at the governor’s mansion protesting the execution of James Clark, who was the 152nd person executed by Governor Perry. Around 6:00 PM, seventeen minutes before Clark died, Perry was seen leaving the mansion in the passenger seat of a black SUV. He was wearing what looked like jogging clothes. We held our signs high as he drove out and one of us made eye contact with him. He knows we were there. On April 26, you can let him know you want him to stop executions by coming to the mansion to protest the next execution.

Click the Action Alert above to Write Texas Gov Perry to Protest the execution of Ryan Dickson on April 26, 2007.

Texas Gov Perry is about to break the record of executions while in office that was set by former Governor Bush. 152 people were executed by Bush while he was governor. On April 26, Perry could reach number 153. The person’s name who could become number 153 is Ryan Dickson.

The Austin Chronicle has another letter-to-the-editor in this week’s edition about the art exhibition at the capitol.

Date Received: Mon., Apr. 9, 12:33PM
IF STATE REPS CAN STEAL, WHY CAN’T THE REST OF US?
Dear Editor,
As an artist, musician, and writer, I was horrified by state Rep. Borris Miles’ action in stealing artwork from an anti-death-penalty exhibition at the Capitol and the legal and public apathy in its wake [“State Representative: Let’s Hang the Artist,” News, March 30]. I brightened, however, when it hit me that, if all I have to do is adopt a stance of righteous indignation, change some language, and abuse my position as an elected official (two out of three ain’t bad), then I, too, can not only publicly confess to stealing but get away with it with nary a raised eyebrow! Thanks to Mr. Miles and the trend he has set, I can now realize my lifelong dream of marching into the nearest Hallmark store and confiscating every glittery, heavy-lidded, huge-craniumed Precious Moments figurine on the shelves, stating that they offend my sensibility as an artist on one hand and as a human with a brain and a modicum of good taste on the other. I shall stash them in my studio and, when confronted, stand tall and proud, declaring that because I have decided for the rest of you that they are tacky and inappropriate, I stripped them from public view on my own initiative. Many of my friends who regularly compliment the emperor’s new clothes would agree with me. Once I start to feel the heat, I’ll simply say I gave the Precious Moments figurines back to a Hallmark employee, who will deny having them, and no one will “seem to know where [they] have gone” at press time.
The sad truth is that there never would have been an issue if Mr. Miles had taken five minutes to go to the information desk and inquire about the nature of the exhibition.
And I’d be arrested and jailed if I took Precious Moments figurines, because people care about Precious Moments and collect them, whereas what Mr. Miles took was just a couple of anti-death-penalty paintings that don’t matter, made by some chick from Portland, Ore., and some black guy on death row. Right, Mr. Miles?

Yours in fear for what’s left of our First Amendment rights,
Jennie Kay Snyder