Executions: Texas needs a moratorium

12/03/2003

Texas, which executes more people than all the states and even most countries, should pause. New evidence of a flawed system and cautions expressed recently by some of those closest to the process make a good case for a moratorium on executions until Texas carefully reviews its death penalty process to assure that it is just.

We're not alone in our reticence. Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford, a death penalty proponent, told a state House committee last week that execution dates for seven Harris County men should be postponed until DNA evidence can be more carefully reviewed. Court of Criminal Appeals Judges Tom Price, Sharon Johnson and Charles Holcomb last month criticized their own court's decision to allow a defendant to be executed this past December, citing concerns about having authorized incompetent defense counsel for him. And the U.S. Supreme Court, in ordering a lower court to reconsider a death penalty conviction last month, cited evidence that the Dallas County district attorney's office was "suffused with bias" at the time of the 1986 case.

Here are some issues a review panel should examine:

NEW TECHNOLOGY: At least a dozen of the 100-plus death row inmates released from death row nationwide since 1973 have been exonerated by new DNA evidence. This is scary. Shouldn't Texas be reviewing the evidence against its death row inmates to assure that an innocent isn't among them?

QUALITY OF EVIDENCE: At last week's state House hearing, Department of Public Safety DNA expert Irma Rios said the Houston lab was close to the worst she had ever seen. Ms. Rios has audited DNA labs worldwide for nearly 20 years.

A former employee who filed a whistleblower's lawsuit against the Harris County medical examiner's office corroborated the allegations. Elizabeth Johnson said there was at least one serious problem in each of the 15 Houston crime lab cases she reviewed in the early to mid-1990s.

What standards of evidence are due defendants? Is Texas meeting them?

REPRESENTATION: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that it isn't required to provide effective counsel in certain death penalty cases. Sure enough, according to review by the Texas Defender Service, it doesn't. It is this travesty that the three appeals court justices railed against last month.

The scheduled execution today of Delma Banks Jr. raises another representation issue. Allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in his case make his execution troubling even to former federal judge and FBI Director William Sessions, a longtime death penalty advocate.

What standards of representation are due defendants? Is Texas meeting them?

BIAS: Last month's Supreme Court ruling suggesting bias in a 1986 case is frightening. If bias existed in this case, did it exist in others? How can Texas best guard against such errors?

These are serious issues that should trouble even the most ardent death penalty supporter. Until we resolve them, Texas should suspend its executions.

We urge Gov. Rick Perry to appoint a respected, open-minded, judicious Texan to lead a review of the state's death penalty process. Mr. Sessions, for example, might make a good leader of such a review. So might former prosecutor John Montford, also a former Democratic state senator and ex-chancellor of Texas Tech. Or former Texas Attorney General and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill.

Advocacy for or against the death penalty isn't the point. Time out to fix a broken system is. It's in the interests of all Texans to support such action.