Texas is a 'state of denial' over the death penalty

By DAVID ATWOOD

HILTON Crawford is scheduled to be executed on July 2. His is the first of four executions scheduled for July. Three more executions are currently planned for August. Thus, Texas will be continuing with its killing ways well into the summer months.

Since the death penalty cannot be justified from the perspective of societal protection, economics or any other rational reason, these executions can only be described as societal revenge. Societal revenge is not good public policy for Texas or any other
state. A wise man once said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." That is certainly the situation in Texas.

Revenge has made us blind to the inequities in the criminal justice system.

During the recent legislative session, Texas legislators refused to correct any of the obvious inequities in the criminal justice system. Not only did they refuse to correct inequities, they refused to even study them. Texas is truly a "state of denial."

On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kevin Wiggins of Maryland that the performance of his defense counsel did not meet minimum standards as guaranteed by the 6th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Wiggins' defense
counsel had utterly failed to present to the jury mitigating circumstances surrounding his background, such as horrific child abuse and molestation. This is, unfortunately, a common occurrence for defendants without financial resources.

Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that people with mental retardation should not be executed. And the court is also looking into the problem of racism in the Texas death penalty process (in the Thomas Miller-El case).

The questions that Texans should ask themselves are these: Why can't the Texas courts, legislators and governor correct these problems? Why do we have to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court to make these improvements?

Some may argue that Texas did improve its criminal justice system in 2001 by passing the Fair Defense Act. Time will tell if this is so. One thing we do know is that the Fair Defense Act will not help any of the 450 people currently on Texas death row, many of whom, like Wiggins, received inadequate legal defense during their trials.

It seems that, in Texas, we do not have blind justice, just blindness.

Atwood is a member of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.