Death sentences declining in Texas, report reveals

If Texas puts to death the five Death Row inmates currently scheduled for execution this year, it will mark an increase over the three executed in 2021 and will raise the number of executions in the state since 1982 to 578.

However, it will mark the fifth consecutive year of single-digit executions in a state that executed 40 convicted felons in 2000.

And last year, the population of Texas Death Row fell to the lowest level since 1985, according to a report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

“Death sentences have remained in the single digits for the past seven years. Just 15 Texas counties have imposed death sentences since 2017. Of these, only three counties (Harris, Smith, and Walker) account for more than one new death sentence,” the report states.

In 2021, juries in only three counties—Bexar, Hunt and Smith—imposed death sentences, the report notes.

Religious liberty issue still to be resolved

“Unlike in 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic was not the primary cause of the low numbers,” the report states. “Instead, the state’s ongoing challenges involving the assessment of intellectual disability in capital cases and concerns surrounding the free exercise of religion in the execution chamber resulted in stays or withdrawals of more than three-fourths of Texas’ scheduled executions.”

In early September, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution of a Texas inmate who asked the state to allow his pastor to lay hands on him and pray for him at the moment of his execution—a request the Texas Department of Criminal Justice denied.

John Ramirez had asked prison officials to allow Dana Moore, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, to lay hands on him and pray for him when he is executed by lethal injection.

Both the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission joined a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to protect the condemned Death Row inmate’s religious freedom.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding the case on Nov. 9 and may render a decision in coming weeks.

Racial disparities still apparent

While fewer juries are imposing death sentences and the state is carrying out fewer executions than it did two decades ago, racial disparities continue to be apparent on Death Row, the coalition report notes.

“Over the last five years, two-thirds of death sentences have been imposed on people of color; 40 percent were imposed on Black defendants,” the report states. Of the three individuals sentenced to die in 2021, two are Black and one is white.

The Black population comprises 11.8 percent of Texas residents, but Black prisoners constitute 45.2 percent of the population on Texas Death Row, the report states.

Texas was one of only five states to carry out executions in 2021. Texas executed three inmates, and Oklahoma executed two. Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri each executed one.

A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll conducted last April found 63 percent of those surveyed said they favor keeping the death penalty for people convicted of violent crimes. While it still represents a strong majority, it is down significantly from 75 percent in February 2015 and 78 percent in 2010.

The coalition report concludes with a call to abandon what the coalition calls “an arbitrary, unfair and biased punishment that puts innocent lives at risk, disproportionately impacts Black defendants and those with intellectual disability, and refuses to recognize the humanity of those condemned by society.”

“Individuals whose cases are rife with errors and the unequal application of the law continue to come within days of being put to death by a state more concerned about what a pastor might say in the execution chamber than the protection of constitutional rights,” the report states.

“Given this persistent dysfunction, the current pause in executions as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the expression of religion in the execution chamber should compel Texans to conclude it is time for the state to abandon the death penalty altogether.”