Black History Month Profile Series: Craig Watkins

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The third in this series is for­mer Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who died on December 12, 2023. 

Craig Watkins, a for­mer defense attor­ney, was elect­ed as Texas’ first Black dis­trict attor­ney and was the cre­ator of the nation’s first Conviction Integrity Unit. He served two terms as Dallas County District Attorney, from 2007 – 2015. 

While in office, Mr. Watkins aban­doned the estab­lished prac­tice of rou­tine­ly oppos­ing defen­dants’ motions for DNA test­ing and cre­at­ed a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) to review cas­es involv­ing alle­ga­tions of wrong­ful con­vic­tion. Heath Harris, who served as Mr. Watkins’ first assis­tant DA, said, ​”He had a lot of courage in try­ing to change the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The stuff that he did here set a blue­print for the nation.” The Dallas County CIU has led to the exon­er­a­tion of 24 peo­ple since 2007. Christopher Scott, one of the men exon­er­at­ed by Mr. Watkins’ DNA test­ing pol­i­cy, stat­ed his ​“heart was bro­ken” by the loss of Mr. Watkins and that Mr. Watkins had ​“saved [his] life.” In 2007, Craig Watkins won Texas Lawyer’s ​“Impact Lawyer of the Year 2007” award and Dallas Weekly’s ​“Man of the Year 2007.” 

Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck told the Wall Street Journal in 2008 that Mr. Watkins’ open­ness to pur­sue claims of inno­cence often helps find the real per­pe­tra­tor in these cas­es and cre­ate leads in oth­er cold cas­es. ​“Many times, you bring these cas­es to dis­trict attor­neys and they say, ​‘You can’t go see my file. I won’t do any­thing.’ There’s a knee-jerk reluc­tance to revis­it any­thing,” said Mr. Scheck. He added that Dallas County’s CIU serves as a mod­el for oth­ers. ​“Mr. Watkins takes the view that if he can cor­rect a wrong­ful con­vic­tion, that’s a good thing.” 

Mr. Watkins’ lega­cy on the death penal­ty was com­pli­cat­ed. He revealed in 2012 that his own great-grand­fa­ther, Richard Johnson, had been exe­cut­ed in 1932. He called on state leg­is­la­tors to review death penal­ty pro­ce­dures to ensure the pun­ish­ment was fair­ly admin­is­tered, and he raised con­cerns about the exe­cu­tion of inno­cent peo­ple, say­ing, ​“I think it’s a legit­i­mate ques­tion to have, to ask: ​‘Have we exe­cut­ed some­one that didn’t com­mit the crime?’” Yet as dis­trict attor­ney, he reg­u­lar­ly sought the new death sen­tences. During his tenure, Dallas County sen­tenced more peo­ple to death than any oth­er Texas county. 

Throughout his career, Mr. Watkins some­times received crit­i­cism for being a ​“crim­i­nal-lov­ing DA.” Mr. Watkins would often respond by stat­ing, ​“We have a con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to seek jus­tice.” Remarking on Mr. Watkins’ death, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price stat­ed, ​“At the end of the day, the scales of jus­tice were bet­ter because of Craig Watkins.”