April 30, 2001
Texas CLC seeks stay of executions
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___FLOWER MOUND--The Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission has joined other faith groups in calling for a two-year moratorium on executions in Texas.
___At an April 19-20 meeting of the commission and its board of consultants, the public policy and moral concerns agency of the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted to support a two-year freeze on the death penalty.
___The halt would allow time for a special study commission to examine the administration of the death penalty in Texas and to recommend reforms.
___The Texas Conference of Churches and a number of other faith communities have endorsed the measure.
___Phil Strickland, director of the Texas CLC, noted Texas is the national leader in executions and a significant number of the executed inmates are poor and non-Anglo.
___"There is a growing sense that the way we do capital punishment in Texas simply is not just and not equitable," he said. "We have to look at the whole system."
___On April 19, the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee approved two resolutions that would set a statewide November referendum on a capital punishment moratorium.
___The previous week, a Senate committee passed a similar bill, which also would halt executions while a study commission examines the way the death penalty is administered in Texas.
___Gov. Rick Perry has opposed the moratorium and the creation of a special study commission on the death penalty.
___Texas Baptists have their own committee studying the issue. At the 1999 BGCT annual session, messengers approved a motion to name a committee to examine the issue of capital punishment.
___Since 1982, when Texas reinstated the death penalty and adopted lethal injections as the method, the state has executed 245 convicted killers, including 40 last year. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice web-site, an inmate's average time on death row is 10.6 years, but some have served up to 24 years.
___In other business, the Texas CLC approved a $1 million giving goal for the 2002 Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger.
___The BGCT world hunger task force recommended to the commission that the offering be divided:
___$235,000 for community ministries in Texas and along the Rio Grande borderlands.
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___If the $1 million goal is met, $410,000 will go to North America, $108,000 to Central and South America, $136,000 to Africa, $88,000 to Europe, $65,000 to the Far East, $46,000 to the Middle East and $47,000 to Asia, with $100,000 reserved for emergency needs wherever they arise.
___Projects range from Christian Women's Job Corps programs in urban settings in the United States to refugee relief in Africa, famine relief in North Korea and agricultural development in El Salvador, Thailand and Jordan.
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