Texas still leads in executions, but the numbers are down here and across the nation

Texas has accounted for half of the executions in the United States so far this year, but the state gave lethal injections to far fewer inmates than last year, mirroring a national trend of fewer death sentences being carried out.

Eighteen inmates were executed in Texas this year compared with 26 last year, while 37 inmates were put to death nationally, with no more expected for the remainder of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

This year’s total is a 12 percent drop from the 42 executed nationally in 2007, and a 30 percent drop from 2006.

"Even in Texas, there has been a decline," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the center, a nonprofit group that opposes the death penalty. "It is still high when compared to others, but there could have been more."

Courts, legislators and the public are increasingly skeptical about the death penalty, whether those concerns are based on innocence, inadequate legal representation or a general feeling that the justice system isn’t fair, Dieter said.

The report also states that as the country struggles with a recession, the death penalty is being examined more closely because of its high costs.

De facto moratorium

The report indicates that all but two of the 37 executions this year took place in the South and Texas. Virginia executed four prisoners, and Georgia and South Carolina executed three each, with Florida, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Ohio sending two each to the death chamber. Kentucky executed one.

In some states, such as California, Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina, the lethal injection issue is still being debated, and no executions occurred, the center reported.

The executions all took place after April 16, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the lethal injection process in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky case that challenged whether the chemical formula used for lethal injection inflicted pain amounting to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

States halted executions while the case was pending before the court.

Fewer death sentences

In another major finding, the report estimates that the total number of death sentences this year will be 111, continuing a decline that started at the beginning of the decade. In 2007, the 115 death sentences were the lowest since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.

Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said that Texas juries have sent 10 people to Death Row this year, the fewest since 1976. She said publicity about inmates being cleared by DNA, and that juries can give defendants a life sentence without parole, has played a factor.

This year a Collin County court dismissed all charges against Death Row inmate Michael Blair after new testing of DNA evidence failed to connect him to the 1993 rape and murder of 7-year-old Ashley Estell.

Juries in Harris County, long the state’s top contributor to Death Row inmates, also sentenced no one to death in 2008, a first in more than three decades.

"I think innocence in non-death penalty cases is a reminder that the system can make mistakes, and less death sentences means less executions," Dieter said.

Manufactured results

Others simply didn’t see any trend in the lower number of executions and death sentences.

After Texas lifted its de facto moratorium on executions, it averaged nearly one per week over a five-month period beginning in June, Houlé said.

"You can manufacture propaganda any way you want. These figures are not a correlation to anything other than we were not allowed to execute anyone for four or five months," said William "Rusty" Hubbarth, an Austin attorney and vice president of Justice For All, a nonprofit group that supports the death penalty.

"If we had had the other four or five months back, we might have taken the number up to 35 or 36."

Hubbarth agreed that economics may be playing a role in whether or not prosecutors seek a death sentence. In Tarrant County, for example, a typical death penalty case that goes to trial costs $200,000 to $250,000. But, depending on the complexity of the case, it can cost much more.

"It is very expensive to try a capital case," Hubbarth said.

Greg Miller, a Tarrant County deputy district attorney, also said he didn’t see anything meaningful about the number of inmates condemned to death this year. Tarrant County has 26 inmates on Death Row. Historically, Tarrant County prosecutors have sought the death penalty in a small percentage of their cases that could have qualified as capital murder cases.

"The fact that we only did two in 2008 is not significant," Miller said. "We tried three death penalty cases. We got death in two and life in the other. We might do three in 2009."

Staff writer Martha Deller contributed to this report, which includes material from The Associated Press.

MAX B. BAKER, 817-390-7714

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