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THE DEATH PENALTY IN TEXAS
BY: Henry E. Dunn Jr.
In 1997, 37 Texas Death
Row prisoners were put to death by lethal injection, a record
breaking year in executions
for Texas. The year 1998, Texas put to death 20 more of its
Death Row Prisoners,
and 35 in 1999, almost breaking it's record of 37 executions.
Now in the year 2000,
Texas has already executed 20 of its death row prisoners, and
have 18 more executions
scheduled, and this is just the month of June. Texas is on a
pace to break it's 1997
record of 37 executions this year, executing no less than 43 of
it's Death Row prisoners.
This article will explain the truth of how the death penalty is
being used in Texas and
why Texas is executing so many of it's Death Row prisoners at
such a fast pace. This
article will give you the insight as to the unequal justice under the
law for Texas Death Row
prisoners.
The laws and guidelines
for death row prisoners in Texas are very limited. Congress
passed the Anti-Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. This law effected
death row appeals because
their life hangs in the balance of the appeals. This law when
applied, gives the chance
that an innocent person may be executed which constitutes
plain murder! This law
in short, is a death warrant for most prisoners on death row. The
old state law process
was long, but it often provided sufficient time to weed out those
individuals who were
wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Innocent people are
being taken to the death
chamber and strapped down, then given a dose of lethal
injection, which ends
their life. History is full of people who were wrongly convicted of a
crime. Texas has sentenced
innocent people to die. The problem that lies here in Texas
is racial prejudice,
official misconduct, withholding favorable evidence, and counsel not
qualified to represent
a defendant in a Capital Murder case. Though it may be
unconstitutional, this
law enables the State of Texas to execute innocent people wrongly
convicted of a crime.
The death penalty has
become a mainstay of the American political diet. The courts,
along with Congress and
the President, continue to ignore the prevalence of racial bias.
The political campaigns
in Texas is based upon who can kill the most death row
prisoners, or sentence
the most defendants to death, each wanting to show that the
death penalty is the
main focus of their campaign, once again playing on the publics fear
of crime. They campaign
for office knowing that in today's climate, the tougher you are
on criminal defendants,
the greater your popularity with the voters. In Texas, which
executes more people
than any other state in the country, Judge Charles Cambell was
voted off the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals in 1994 following the reversal of a highly
publicized murder case.
He served on the bench 12 years and was much more qualified
than his winning opponent,
Stephen Mansfield, who is still sitting on the bench of the
Court of Criminal Appeals,
and who had been fined for practicing law without a license
and had virtually no
criminal 1aw experience. The secret to Mansfie1d's success was
that he promised to uphold
more death sentences and kill more defendants. Many
publicly elected officials,
citizens groups, and legal experts would agree that death
penalty trials have become
showcases for judges. In order to avoid the stigma of being
soft on crime and being
subject to political attacks, some judges go out of their way to
demonstrate their toughness
and resolve to ki1l. Indeed, just as candidates for
legislative office are
campaigning loudly on the death penalty, judges and local
prosecutor are also citing
the number of people they have sent to death row in their
campaign for office.
No one does this better than Texas own governor, George Bush,
who has executed 131
death row prisoners as of June 5, 2000, since he has been in
office as the Texas governor,
and flaunts those numbers with more to come as he runs
for President of the
United States.
The Death Penalty in Texas
has been used to play on the publics fear of crime. The
media convicts a person
accused of a Capital Offense! before that person even makes
it to trial. This is
what gives people of society the assumption that a person is guilty,
before being proven innocent.
The media is not the only blame for society's way of
thinking. You also have
the court appointed lawyers, who because they are not being
paid the amount of money
he/she desires for representing a defendant for a Capital
Offense. And the court
does not furnish him with the funds for investigating the offense
and other legal needs,
he is not going to give 100% of his time working on a defense for
when it is time to go
to trial. He does not absolutely have what it takes for an adequate
defense because of lack
of funds.
The death penalty always
leaves questions to be resolved. The one big question that
no-one has an answer
for is, "what about the DANGER of MISTAKE?" What if an
innocent person is executed?
Unlike a prison term, which can be commuted at any time,
the death penalty, once
executed, cannot be recalled. Thus, the irrevocability of the
punishment heightens
the dangers involved with wrongful conviction. Opponents cite
studies concluding that
there have been more than 100 cases of an innocent person
wrong1y convicted for
murder, in at 1east 31 of these, a death sentence was imposed.
More important, it is
c1aimed that at least eight innocent individuals have been
executed. Opponents argue
that the likelihood of executing even one innocent person
warrants rejecting the
death penalty.
The death penalty is a
punishment for the poor as well as the black. Over half of those
on death row are people
of color, though they represent only 20% of the country's
population. Black men
make up nearly 40% of all U.S. death row prisoners, though they
account for only 6% of
people living in the U.S.
Nationwide, cases involving
a white victim and a defendant of color are most likely to
result in a death sentence.
The Baldus study found that 6 out of 10 defendants
sentenced to death in
Georgia for killing a white person would not have received a
death sentence had their
victim been black. A white victim case was over four times
more likely to result
in a death sentence than was a comparable black victim case. In
Maryland, the state with
the highest percentage of African Americans on death row, a
death sentence was eight
times more likely in a case involving a white victim than one
involving a black victim,
according to a 1987 "Public Defenders Office study. A 1990
U.S. Genera1 Accounting
Office report revealed "a pattern of evidence indicating racial
disparities in charging,
sentencing and imposition of the death penalty."
The death penalty also
has other flaws in the way it is applied. Before a jury is asked to
consider a death sentence,
it listens to special issues in which it returns an answer of
yes or no to each special
issue. One of these issues deal with future dangerousness.
Will the defendant commit
future acts of violence in the future? The problem with this
issue is, no one can
predict the future. You may do something today, but you may never
do that same thing again
in your life. No one can predict what they will he doing 30 years
from now. A jury has
no other choice but to answer this question yes.
Things do get worse as
Texas and other states convict and sentence the mentally ill to
die by lethal injection.
When a person is mentally sick and cannot control his actions, this
is a person who needs
help, not a death sentence which you will get here in Texas with a
problem of this sort
if convicted of a Capital crime. Texas has always been a state to
use other means as a
way to get rid of a prob1em, instead of treating the problem with
it's proper remedy~.
This is what this state does to the menta1ly insane and mentally
retarded. On May 6, 1997,
Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man was put to death
by lethal injection.
Governor George Rush and the State Board of Pardon & Parole
rejected a request from
Terry's attorneys, as did the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of
execution. Because the
law had changed, the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Terry's
habeas petition because
it didn't meet the 1995 requirements that a successive writ
contain evidence that
was factually unavailable when the first was filed. Johnny Penry,
another mentally ill
Texas Death Row prisoner sentenced to die by lethal injection. Terry
was the 31st mentally
ill person to be executed in this nation in the past 20 years, lets
hope Johnny Penry is
not the 32nd. Another Texas Death Row prisoner who has been
found legally insane
is Jermarr Arnold. Arnold has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as
having "gross psychotic
schizophrenia." Texas, however, wants to use Arnold to close
their case hook on a
case which they have no evidence linking him to the crime. Arnold
was found mentally insane
in two other states, but not Texas. Instead of Texas giving him
the treatment in which
he should be given, they wish to use him to close their case when
the real killer is still
out there, but they wish to make Arnold pay for a crime someone
else committed with his
life.
In 1997, 37 executions
took place at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. Out of 37 of
these prisoners, not
one was a woman. In the year 1998, Texas scheduled it's first
execution of a woman
since 1863. The prisoner was Karla Faye Tucker. Tucker's
execution date gained
widespread attention from groups allover the world who are
against the death penalty.
Why did Karla Faye Tucker's execution date attract so much
attention? Through al1
the years Texas~ has been executing the men on death row with
little local attention,
less know widespread attention, and then there was Karla Faye
Tucker, a born again
Christian who said her life should have been spared, and yes, her
life should have been
spared, but what about all those men Texas has executed who
too, said they were a
born again Christian? Their execution dates and execution~ didn't
receive widespread attention.
No, that's really not why people were being so generous
to Karla Faye Tucker.
It was because Texas was attempting to execute it's first woman
since the Civil War.
The fact that Texas was attempting to execute a woman was why
there was so much nationwide
attention focused on Karla Faye Tucker's execution.
Tucker admits that she
committed her crime, but she had strayed away from the lifestyle
that she was once committed
to. So why did Karla Faye Tucker's execution gain so
much attention, way much
more than the men who are being escorted to the death
chamber on a regular
basis. That's simple. It's because Karla Faye Tucker is a woman.
All the circumstances
surrounding her case and the scheduling of her execution shows
how the death penalty
is being unfairly used. It shows that people think that the death
penalty is an appropriate
punishment for men, but not for women. There are 7 women on
Texas Death Row, and
over 400 men. How fairly do you think the death penalty is being
used in Texas? Texas
has executed 219 men, some whom were proven innocent after
being executed, and 2
women. Texas second execution of a woman, was a 63 year old
grandmother by the name
of Betty Lou Beets. At 63 years old, how much of a threat or
danger do you think she
was to society? The Governor of Texas, George W. Bush is a
staunch supporter of
the death penalty and has just recently granted his first 30 day
delay, and has commuted
only one death penalty to life in prison.
On February 2, 1998, the
Texas Board of Pardons and Pardons denied Ms. Tucker's
commutation of her death
sentence as expected. Ms. Tucker's lawyers, David Botsford
and George Secrest, filed
motions in states courts to delay the execution, saying the
clemency process is unconstitutional,
is rarely granted and excludes many humanitarian
factors from consideration.
The Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles, at the time of
Tucker's execution, did
not hear from the prisoner and most of the time, the pardons
board did not even meet
to vote. The board does not consider how the prisoner has
changed and has been
rehabilitated. 16 of 37 prisoners executed in 1997 sought
commutation, but no hearings
was held and no parole board members voted for
commutation in any case.
Texas is no longer a state
who wants to rehabilitate its prisoners. It's either you
receive~ the death penalty,
or you get locked away for the rest of your 1ife. This is all a
part of the get tough
on crime campaign in which elections are based on. If Karla Faye
Tucker was a born again
Christian, then this only raises another question about the
death penalty and the
Texas justice system. How does the death penalty when applied,
constitute killing peop1e
who can be rehabilitated? What about those people who are
being wrongly convicted
with unfair tria1s and sentenced to death? That question brings
up a number of cases
that has the people of Texas wondering about how the death
penalty is being applied
here in Texas. These cases are often forgotten about after over
a long period of time,
but to the men and women on death row, these cases remain in
their minds for the fact
that there are more innocent and wrongly convicted men and
women sitting on death
row at this very moment. On Tune 26, 1991 in Texas, the
Supreme Court agreed
to hear the case of James Edward Smith, but didn't issue a stay
of execution. After Mr.
Smith was executed, the Supreme Court dropped his case for the
obvious reason, that
Smith could no longer benefit from the high courts review because
he was executed. Mr.
Smith was also a death row prisoner with a mental illness. There
is also the case of David
Wayne Smith, better known for the Lake Waco murders, a
crime investigators now
believe Mr. Spence did not commit. None of the evidence in the
case can link Mr. Spence
to the Lake Waco murders, the most gruesome crime to ever
happen in Waco, Texas.
On April 3rd, a rainy Thursday evening in 1997, Mr. Spence
was pronounced dead at
6:32 p.m. He was executed by lethal injection for the Lake
Waco murders. No evidence
ever showed he was guilty of the crime for which he was
accused. His case was
investigated by Brian Pardo who agreed to investigate the case
until some evidence turned
up that Mr. Spence was guilty of the Lake Waco murders. No
evidence ever did. "There
is no chance that he committed those murders," Mr. Pardo
said. Another former
death row prisoner who was bidding for his freedom is Danny
Dean Thomas, whose conviction
was overturned by a federal judge in July of 1997. The
Attorney General's Office
had 30 days to appeal, but a state attorney was a day late,
automatically dismissing
the appeal. After spending l5 years on death row, Mr. Thomas
was granted a new trial.
In his second trial, he was again sentenced to death. Who can
forget the case of Ricardo
Guerra, who was released after spending 15 years on death
row for the murder of
a Houston Police Officer, James Harris. He was released after an
appellate court judge
upheld a federal court ruling that cited police and prosecutorial
misconduct in the murder
investigation. The Ricardo Guerra case, in particular,
reinforced Mexican public
opinion against the death penalty because it showed that
someone conceivably could
be executed for a crime he or she didn't commit. Another
Mexican citizen who was
wrongly convicted and sentenced to die, was Tristan Montoya
who signed a confession,
written in English, that he could not read. When attorneys for
Tristan Montoya filed
Texas Open Records request for Article 36 advisories from the
State Department on file,
the Governor's Office, State Attorney General's Office, and
Brownsville Police all
replied they found no record of the advisories. The problem of
getting article 36 enforced
was underscored after attorneys for Tristan Montoya asked
the State Department
to investigate charges that Texas had violated the death row
prisoner's treaty rights.
On June 18, 1997, 2 hours before the scheduled execution,
Tristan Montoya's attorney,
Bonnie Goldstein, was faxed the Governor's Office response
to the charge. An hour
later, Governor Bush denied a stay and Tristan Montoya was put
to death. Who can forget
the most recent cases of death row prisoners with very strong
claims of innocence.
Cases such as Odell Barnes and James Bethard. Of course there
are others, but the Governor
of Texas, George Bush, actually went public and said that
Texas does not sentence
innocent people to death, and that there is no doubt that Texas
has not executed any
innocent people. He said the people of Texas are just bad. Here in
Texas, an innocence claim
is really no claim.
Texas is continuing to
lead the nation in executions. When will people come to their
senses and realize that
murder is murder no matter how it is committed!? There is no
such thing as a legal
way to kill some- one. Texas has no sense of rehabilitation, and
they are killing it's
men and women by means to get political power. They are locking it's
citizens up, guilty or
not, and throwing away the key to get that tough on crime mentality.
The next time you hear
about a death penalty case, think about the things you have read
here in this article,
and remember the chances of sending an innocent man or woman to
death row who may be
innocent, or are you sending someone to death row who has a
chance for rehabilitation,
through the prison system such as Karla Faye Tucker.
Remember, the courts
don't always grant review, even when it thinks a lower court is
wrong. A prison sentence
can be commuted at any time, but unlike a prison sentence,
the death penalty once
executed, cannot be recalled.
Henry E Dunn Jr. #999165
Polunsky Unit
12002 FM 350 South
Livingston, Texas, 77351.
USA
Note: This is a revised
article by Texas Death Row Prisoner Henry Dunn Jr., from an
article written by him
in January of 1998. This article was revised June 13, 2000.
Hello! My name is Henry E. Dunn Jn., a 26 year old Texas Death
Row prisoner. I am looking for a sincere friendship with someone
who may be able to bring some happiness to my life under the
present circumstances and who could share some of their valuable
and quality time with me. I am an open minded person, and I am
looking for friendships from male and females. Your race is
unimportant. I want to get to know you for who you are as a
person, and I have a lot of time to spare, which can be your time.
Here are some things you may like to know about me. I am a fun,
considerate and sincere person. My hobbies are crafts, reading,
writing, writing articles, daily exercise, studying the law and the
death penalty, and I am presently studying to become a qualified
paralegal. My biggest hobby is collecting photos of all kinds. I am
also a very good artist.
I hope that you will write to me, because it can get very lonely in
this cell alone, and I love to meet new people and make new
friends. If you would lie to know more about my case or read any
articles that I have wrote, please continue to read this site, and I
hope that something you read will convince you to write to me. I
look forward to hearing from someone soon. Thank you for your
time.
If you are interested, please write to me at the following address:
Henry Dunn
Polunsky Unit/999165
12002 FM350 South
Livingston, Texas
77351 USA
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