Post by happyhaddock on Feb 21, 2007 14:02:42 GMT -5
A STATE OF DENIAL: TEXAS JUSTICE AND THE DEATH PENALTY
Executive Summary
The nation is embroiled in a debate over the death penalty. Each day brings fresh accounts of racial bias, incompetent counsel, and misconduct committed by police officers or prosecutors in capital cases. The public increasingly questions whether the ultimate penalty can be administered fairly - free from the taint of racism; free from the disgrace of counsel sleeping through a client's trial; free from the risk of executing an innocent person. Support for the death penalty is falling, and across the country, momentum gathers for a moratorium. Even death penalty supporters - such as Illinois Governor George Ryan - have acknowledged the need for fundamental reform.
In Texas, the call for reform has been deflected by state officials' aggressive defense of the Texas system. Repeatedly, Governor Bush and others have defended the administration of the death penalty. Texas Attorney General John Cornyn has gone so far as to describe the death penalty in Texas as "a model for the nation."
This report challenges that confident assessment. To show why Texas justice is not a model for anyone, we have undertaken a preliminary examination of the Texas death penalty system. We have conducted original research into the discriminatory charging practices of Texas prosecutors. We studied hundreds of cases, including every published decision (and many unpublished decisions) of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in capital cases in the modern death penalty era. We examined over half of the capital post-conviction appeals filed in Texas since 1995 - a stage of the appeals that has never before been systematically scrutinized - and we evaluated treatment given to those appeals by the state courts.
In this Report, we explain and lay bare many disturbing features of a thoroughly flawed system.
<MORE> . . .
Download the full report
Executive Summary
The nation is embroiled in a debate over the death penalty. Each day brings fresh accounts of racial bias, incompetent counsel, and misconduct committed by police officers or prosecutors in capital cases. The public increasingly questions whether the ultimate penalty can be administered fairly - free from the taint of racism; free from the disgrace of counsel sleeping through a client's trial; free from the risk of executing an innocent person. Support for the death penalty is falling, and across the country, momentum gathers for a moratorium. Even death penalty supporters - such as Illinois Governor George Ryan - have acknowledged the need for fundamental reform.
In Texas, the call for reform has been deflected by state officials' aggressive defense of the Texas system. Repeatedly, Governor Bush and others have defended the administration of the death penalty. Texas Attorney General John Cornyn has gone so far as to describe the death penalty in Texas as "a model for the nation."
This report challenges that confident assessment. To show why Texas justice is not a model for anyone, we have undertaken a preliminary examination of the Texas death penalty system. We have conducted original research into the discriminatory charging practices of Texas prosecutors. We studied hundreds of cases, including every published decision (and many unpublished decisions) of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in capital cases in the modern death penalty era. We examined over half of the capital post-conviction appeals filed in Texas since 1995 - a stage of the appeals that has never before been systematically scrutinized - and we evaluated treatment given to those appeals by the state courts.
In this Report, we explain and lay bare many disturbing features of a thoroughly flawed system.
<MORE> . . .
Download the full report