The Houston Chronicle reports that as death sentences have decline, life without parole sentences have risen. People sentenced to life without parole are sentenced to die in prison, so they constitute a new kind of condemned person. The Texas Life Without Parole bill was passed in 2005. The author of the bill wanted to have three options in capital cases, 1) death, 2) life without parole, and 3) life with the possibility of parole after 40 years; however conservatives and Republicans refused to support the bill unless the possibility of parole after 40 years was removed from the bill. That left only two options, death and life without parole.
The article also points out that Bexar (San Antonio) and Tarrant County (Fort Worth) now send more people to death row than Harris County.
Exceprts:
Bexar and Tarrant each sent eight newly convicted killers to death row in the four years since the law took effect, state prison data show. In the same period, larger Harris and Dallas counties sent six apiece, based on the Chronicle’s analysis of Texas Department of Criminal Justice death row arrivals.
and
No one disputes Texas’ life-without-parole law has had another, more measurable impact.
Welcome to ‘life row’
Already, the 4-year-old law has created a kind of “life row” — a perpetual population of convicted killers and accomplices who can never win reductions in their sentence regardless of behavior, youth , mental deficiency or other factors. This group appears to be growing faster than death row itself. Texas’ death row population stands at 332, TDCJ data show. As of Nov. 30, a total of 226 inmates were serving life without parole.
