Citing ​‘Inexperience’ and ​‘Miscommunication,’ Texas Conducts Execution Without Media Witnesses

In a fail­ure of trans­paren­cy one leg­isla­tive leader described as ​“unfath­omable,” the State of Texas put Quintin Jones (pic­tured) to death on May 19, 2021 with­out any media wit­ness­es present to observe the exe­cu­tion. It was the first time in the 571 exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed by Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its death penal­ty statute in 1976 that no media wit­ness­es were present. 

Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Director of Communications Jeremy Desel blamed the sna­fu on ​“mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” by inex­pe­ri­enced exe­cu­tion team mem­bers who failed to noti­fy prison offi­cials to bring media wit­ness­es into the view­ing area. ​“We have a num­ber of new per­son­nel that are a part of the exe­cu­tion team who have not been a part of an exe­cu­tion in the past,” he said. ​“As a result of a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between offi­cials at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, there was nev­er a call made to the sum­mon the media wit­ness­es into the unit. We apol­o­gize for this crit­i­cal error. The agency is inves­ti­gat­ing to deter­mine exact­ly what occurred to ensure it does not happen again.” 

The agency’s action raised renewed con­cerns about botched exe­cu­tions and exe­cu­tion secre­cy. Rep. Jeff Leach (R – Plano), a co-chair of the Texas House Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, tweet­ed, ​“There needs to be an imme­di­ate inves­ti­ga­tion in to what hap­pened, why it hap­pened and who is respon­si­ble. It was ​‘a mis­take’ and/​or ​‘a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion’ is not accept­able. This is an unfath­omable, colos­sal screw-up and we need answers.”

Texas law autho­rizes five media wit­ness­es to observe each exe­cu­tion, spec­i­fy­ing that at least one each must be reporters for the Associated Press and the Huntsville Item. Reporters for both media out­lets were present at the prison wait­ing to wit­ness the exe­cu­tion, includ­ing AP reporter Michael Graczyk, who has wit­nessed more than 400 Texas exe­cu­tions. Prison offi­cials nev­er made the call to bring the reporters to the view­ing room adja­cent to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber and they were still in a wait­ing area when they learned the exe­cu­tion had already been carried out. 

Associated Press cov­er­age of the inci­dent high­light­ed the impor­tance of media wit­ness­es in reveal­ing prob­lems with exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“The AP aims to cov­er every exe­cu­tion in the U.S. and has for decades. In recent years, reporters have been able to wit­ness and tell the pub­lic about botched or prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions in Alabama, Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio, where inmates could be seen gasp­ing for breath for long peri­ods of time or writhing and clench­ing their teeth while on the gurney.” 

“Letting media wit­ness­es in to see an exe­cu­tion isn’t hard,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham said in a state­ment. “[I]f the state with the most expe­ri­ence in exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers lacks the com­pe­tence to car­ry out this most basic exe­cu­tion func­tion, what does that tell us about what else in the exe­cu­tion process states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can’t be trust­ed to perform properly?”

Rep. Joe Moody (D – El Paso), the oth­er co-chair of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform cau­cus, told the Texas Tribune, ​“Nothing the gov­ern­ment does should hap­pen in the dark, least of all some­thing as grave as the tak­ing of a life. I’ve always said that human error — whether it’s on the street or in a court or at the death cham­ber itself — is one of the main rea­sons the state should nev­er be involved in killing a human being.” 

Joseph Larsen, a board mem­ber of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, echoed Rep. Leach’s crit­i­cism of the exe­cu­tion, call­ing the exclu­sion of media wit­ness­es ​“inex­cus­able.” ​“It is not dif­fer­ent from requir­ing that the tri­al of the per­son charged be pub­lic and wit­nessed,” he said. ​“Texas offi­cials would like to restrict media access to the extent (most) pos­si­ble, most­ly for political reasons.” 

Dunham also empha­sized the neces­si­ty of media wit­ness­es for ensur­ing trans­paren­cy and the legit­i­ma­cy of the exe­cu­tion process. ​“That Texas appar­ent­ly cares so lit­tle about trans­paren­cy that it ​‘for­got’ to let the media in — and then no one on the exe­cu­tion team inside the wit­ness­ing rooms noticed that the media wit­ness­es weren’t there — exhibits a stun­ning dis­re­gard for pub­lic account­abil­i­ty,” he said. ​“Texas’s fail­ure last night is des­tined to become a poster child for the lack of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty in the U.S. exe­cu­tion process. It sym­bol­izes why the pub­lic con­tin­ues to lose faith in states’ trust­wor­thi­ness to prop­er­ly conduct executions.”

Jones’ exe­cu­tion was the first by any U.S. state in more than 10 months, end­ing the longest peri­od with­out a state exe­cu­tion in more than forty years. The last state exe­cu­tion was on July 8, 2020, when Texas exe­cut­ed Billy Joe Wardlow.

Jones’ exe­cu­tion had already attract­ed nation­wide atten­tion, both because it marked the resump­tion of state exe­cu­tions, which had large­ly been on hold dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and because the victim’s fam­i­ly had request­ed clemen­cy. A Change​.org peti­tion ask­ing Governor Greg Abbott to grant clemen­cy to Jones had gar­nered more than 150,000 sig­na­tures. His case high­light­ed racial dis­par­i­ties in the clemen­cy process. In 2018, David Dow, the attor­ney for death-row pris­on­er Christopher Young, who also was denied clemen­cy, not­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers of the mur­der vic­tim had asked the par­dons board to com­mute the death sen­tence imposed on the per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing their loved one six times this cen­tu­ry. “[O]f those six,” Dow said, ​“three are black, two are Hispanic and one is white. Only in the case of the white guy [Thomas Whitaker] did they vote to rec­om­mend com­mu­ta­tion.” Jones became the fourth Black pris­on­er denied clemen­cy despite the sup­port of the victim’s family.