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Thread: Texas Capital Punishment News

  1. #161
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    This is good news. Jailhouse snitches are often just as bad as the people they're informing on.

  2. #162
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Proposed law could drastically reduce executions in Texas

    Mental illness disqualifies defendants from death penalty under proposed bill

    By Paul Venema
    KSAT News

    AUSTIN, Texas - A big change could be coming to the way the state imposes the death penalty.

    The House Jurisprudence Committee is considering the bill during the special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott.

    House Bill 36 would disqualify defendants with serious mental disabilities including schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and depression from having the death penalty imposed on them.

    “The effect would be practically to do away with the death penalty in Texas,” said veteran San Antonio defense attorney Raymond Fuchs. “Almost every individual who is charged with capital murder suffers from at least one of those disabilities.”

    “If you’re against the death penalty, this is a very good step forward for Texas because this state a death penalty with an express lane,” Fuchs said.

    The bill dictates that a hearing similar to a competency hearing be held before the death penalty could be taken off the table.

    Former County Court Judge Tony Jimenez, who favors the death penalty under certain circumstances, said that the bill is a move in the right direction.

    “I think that a person’s mental state is extremely important in making a determination on whether they should be subjected to the death penalty,” Jimenez said.

    The bill died in committee during this year’s regular session.

    Sponsors admit that it could well face the same fate during the special session.

    https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/prop...tions-in-texas
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #163
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    As lethal injection lawsuit continues, Texas replenishes execution drug supplies

    Even with a lawsuit over lethal injection drugs winding its way through court, Texas has managed to replenish its supply.

    The last doses of the state's execution drugs, pentobarbital, were set to expire in January, just days before a scheduled execution. A new record indicates that the supply won't expire until July 2018, well past all scheduled executions.

    It's unclear whether the state purchased more of the drug or just established a new expiration date, and Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark declined to clarify.

    Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, wasn't surprised to learn of the state's renewed stock.

    "While Texas has from time to time stated that it's having difficulty obtaining pentobarbital, it has always been able to obtain the drugs to carry out executions," he said. "When it's needed the drugs, Texas has always found them."

    Since 2012, the state has used a single-drug protocol, administering a lethal dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

    Texas came close to exhausting its supplies with executions still on the calendar in spring 2015. Ultimately, TDCJ managed to get more of the lethal drug, but Clark declined to offer details except to say that no executions in the Lone Star State have been delayed due a lack of execution drugs.

    A records request last month showed that eight pentobarbital doses were set to expire in July 2017 and another 10 in January.

    One of those doses was used in the July 27 execution of Taichin Preyor, leaving nine that expire just after the new year.

    And now, instead of eight doses expiring on July 20, 2017, state logs list eight doses received that day as "return from supplier" and set to expire on July 20, 2018.

    "Given the documents supplied by TDCJ designating that these vials were returned to the supplier and then the reemergence of vials with a brand new expiration date exactly one year out, an educated guess is that they're using the same drugs that they previously stated already expired," said Maurie Levin, a Texas death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "But because they insist on keeping this information secret, we don't know what they're doing."

    Currently, the state is embroiled in a lawsuit over an intercepted order of another lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental. The powerful drug was part of the execution process until 2011 when dwindling supplies forced the state to replace it with pentobarbital as part of a three-drug cocktail.

    The following year, the state switched from a three-drug mix to a single dose of pentobarbital.

    But when pentobarbital suppliers started drying up, Texas started searching for other lethal injection drugs.

    That search landed Texas in hot water when authorities at Bush Intercontinental Airport seized 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental en route to Hunstville from India-based supplier Harris Pharma.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration later said the drugs were improperly labeled and not approved for injection in humans, but TDCJ this year filed a lawsuit demanding the return of what state officials deemed an "unjustified seizure."

    Although the detained drugs appear to have expired in May, Texas has continued its legal action, which also seeks to lift the FDA's ban on importation of sodium thiopental for law-enforcement use.

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...witter-desktop

  4. #164
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Nearly 400 capital murder convicts get life without parole

    In six years, Texas has built a "lifer's row" filled with 398 prisoners who will never be released through parole - a fast-growing group that already has outpaced the number of inmates serving a death sentence in the Lone Star State, a Houston Chronicle analysis of prison records shows.

    Harris County prosecutors, who historically have led the state in seeking death sentences, have so far also been the most aggressive in pursuing capital murder charges and obtaining mandatory life without parole sentences in capital cases.

    Texas became the last of the death penalty states to approve life without parole in September 2005, after Harris County prosecutors dropped their opposition to the change. The law applies only to offenders convicted of capital murder.

    For the first time, it gave jurors and prosecutors a non-death sentence that guaranteed someone convicted of killing a child, killing multiple victims, slaying a police officer or committing another capital crime could not be released on parole.

    In all, 110 Harris County offenders have been sentenced to life without parole since the law took effect, compared with 11 death sentences.

    "Harris County is a tough law and order county on the really bad actors. That hasn't changed," said First Assistant District Attorney James Leitner.

    The change has led to fewer death sentences in Texas and nationwide.

    Fifty-one people were sentenced to life without parole in Dallas County. Tarrant County had 26; Bexar County had 22.

    Texas offenders convicted of capital murder were six times more often sentenced to life without parole than to death: 66 people got death sentences compared with the 398 lifers. The life without parole law has been used in about one third of all Texas counties at least once, the Chronicle's analysis of state prison records shows.

    Recent sentences

    Nationally, it's viewed as a less expensive option that offers the benefit of being reversible - unlike a death sentence - if innocence evidence or other information becomes available after the fact, said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

    "Texas is certainly down, and life without parole is definitely playing a role there," Dieter said. "And other states have found that as well."

    One of the most recent no-parole sentences went to former Houston Fifth Ward Pastor Tracy Bernard "T.B." Burleson, 44, convicted earlier this year of persuading his 21-year-old son to shoot his 56-year-old wife, Pauletta, May 18, 2010.

    "He could have been injected, but they gave him life, and I'm satisfied with that … I know I can't bring my sister back. But he's going to have ample time where he's going to think about what he did," said Fannie J. Aaron, the victim's sister. "And that's a lifetime. He won't be able to get out and take someone else's life."

    In August, Omar Javier Torres, arrested in North Carolina after two years on the lam, received a life without parole sentence for breaking into his ex-girlfriend's apartment and shooting her boyfriend.

    The no-parole option has been most controversial when used against juveniles; the U.S. Supreme Court last year issued a ruling in Graham v. Florida that banned the sentences for youths convicted of non-homicide offenses. Other appeals are pending.

    Juvenile offenders

    From September 2005 to September 2009, Texas allowed life without parole prison sentences for juvenile offenders who had been certified to stand trial as adults. The law was subsequently changed to bar such punishment. By then, 21 people sentenced for crimes they committed before age 18 had been sentenced, including eight from Harris County.

    Seventeen women are serving life without parole. Two were juvenile offenders. One is Ashley Ervin, a former Harris County area honor student sentenced for her role at 17 as the driver for a murderous robbery ring led by older males.

    Minority groups

    Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit critical of the national explosion in such sentences, argued the offenders are more likely to come from impoverished minority groups who sometimes get unfairly targeted by police.

    "We see that around the country that the race differences in life sentences are generally more extreme," he said.

    So far in Texas, 76 percent of the state's "lifers" are minorities, compared with 70 percent of death row inmates.

    http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...fe-2299362.php

  5. #165
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    Why Texas’ ‘death penalty capital of the world’ stopped executing people

    By PHIL MCCAUSLAND
    nbcnews.com

    Since the Supreme Court legalized capital punishment in 1976, Harris County, Texas, has executed 126 people. That's more executions than every individual state in the union, barring Texas itself.

    Harris County's executions account for 23 percent of the 545 people Texas has executed. On the national level, the state alone is responsible for more than a third of the 1,465 people put to death in the United States since 1976.

    In 2017, however, the county known as the "death penalty capital of the world" and the "buckle of the American death belt" executed and sentenced to death an astonishing number of people: zero.

    This is the first time since 1985 that Harris County did not execute any of its death row inmates, and the third year in a row it did not sentence anyone to capital punishment either.

    The remarkable statistic reflects a shift the nation is seeing as a whole.

    “The practices that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office is following are also significant because they reflect the growing movement in the United States toward reform prosecutors who have pledged to use the death penalty more sparingly if at all,” said Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

    The city of Houston lies within the confines of Harris County, making it one of the most populous counties in the country — and recently it became one of the most diverse, with a 2012 Rice University report concluded that Houston has become the most diverse city in the country.

    Under these new conditions, Kim Ogg ran in 2016 to become the county’s district attorney as a reformist candidate who pledged to use the death penalty in a more judicious manner than her predecessors, though the longtime prosecutor didn’t say she would abandon it altogether. Rather, Ogg said she would save it for the “worst of the worst” — such as serial killer Anthony Shore, who was rescheduled for execution next month.

    But this year, Ogg appears to have held true to her promise of only pursuing the death penalty in what she deems the most extreme cases. It represents a break from a long pattern of Harris County prosecutors who pushed for the death penalty in nearly all capital cases.

    “The overall idea of what makes us safer is changing,” Ogg said. “We’re reframing the issues. It’s no longer the number of convictions or scalps on the wall. It’s making sure the punishment meets the crime.”

    Ogg’s approach has earned her recognition from experts, including those opposed to the use of capital punishment.

    “She is a much more fair-minded prosecutor than we’ve seen in the past,” said Kristin Houle, the executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “She’s very deliberate in her approach to the issues and appears to listen to the concerns of the community. But I think there are still a lot of opportunities for further reform in Harris County.”

    But Ogg said she cannot alone take credit for the recent drop in executions. The trend precedes her slightly and can also be connected to better educated and more diverse jury pools, as well as Texas’ new sentencing option of life without parole. The state also has a more skilled group of indigent defense lawyers who build up mitigating circumstances — such as an abusive childhood or mental illness — for an alleged murderer’s crime.

    Even a state like Texas might stop sentencing alleged killers to death in the near future. And that trend could well extend nationwide.

    “We’ve seen a deepening decline in the death penalty since the year 2000, and some states fell faster than others,” said University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett, who wrote “End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice.” He added that the declines are steepest in counties that had sentenced the most people to death.

    “Juries are turning away from it, prosecutors are turning away from it, so [the death penalty is] withering away on the vine whether courts or legislators decide to do anything about it,” Garrett said.

    As for Ogg, she only said that she represents modern-day Harris County, not the one made famous for the number of people it executed.

    She said that her office still has more than 80 pending capital murder cases and she’ll examine each one thoroughly to decide whether the death penalty is the most fitting punishment.

    “With other sentencing options and with an increased knowledge of science and technology, Americans feel responsible as jurors in a way they didn’t in the past because there’s more information to be considered,” she said. “So I think attitudes toward the death penalty are changing.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/le...people-n830276
    Last edited by Moh; 12-19-2017 at 06:06 AM. Reason: Included headline, author and publication. Put link on the bottom.

  6. #166
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    so could this be part of the reason of the lack of death warrants in texas? the harris county prosecutor is simply not seeking them?

  7. #167
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Texas hasn't been seeing a lack of warrant's its just that they have been getting a 60% stay rate. Harris has gotten warrants this year for a couple of people, Anthony Shore for example. Also Harris county's judges seem to be taking their time with DR cases today. Must of the cases from Harris are stuck in legal muck for one reason or another as well.
    Last edited by Mike; 12-18-2017 at 06:45 PM.

  8. #168
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    Shore was mentioned in the article. Was there any other harris county warrants this year besides shore?

  9. #169
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    I actually got that wrong, shore was the only one this year. Harris keeps going for people over the years but they keep getting stayed.

  10. #170
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    i think the new DA just started this year. she only feels the DP is appropriate for serial killers.

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