DPIC Analysis: 13 Texas Death Warrants Raise Troubling Questions About U.S. Execution Practices

In a year in which few states have car­ried out any exe­cu­tions, the aggres­sive exe­cu­tion prac­tices of a sin­gle state — Texas — stand in sharp con­trast. The Lone Star State has sched­uled thir­teen exe­cu­tions for the last five months of 2019, more than the rest of the coun­try com­bined. And a DPIC review of the cir­cum­stances in which the war­rants were issued rais­es trou­bling ques­tions as to whether the state is exe­cut­ing the most moral­ly cul­pa­ble indi­vid­u­als for the worst of the worst crimes or the most vul­ner­a­ble pris­on­ers and pris­on­ers who were pro­vid­ed the worst legal process. 

The cas­es of the thir­teen men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion include two with strong claims of inno­cence, two whom author­i­ties admit did not kill any­one but were sen­tenced to death under Texas’ con­tro­ver­sial ​“law of par­ties,” and eight who exhib­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant men­tal or emo­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties as a result of intel­lec­tu­al impairments/​brain dam­age, seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, or chron­ic trau­ma. Three pris­on­ers were age 21 or younger at the time of the crime for which they were con­vict­ed. (Click here to enlarge the graph­ic.) Four pris­on­ers sched­uled for exe­cu­tion had raised claims that their attor­neys did not pro­vide them with con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and six received oth­er forms of defi­cient legal process — includ­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny at their tri­als, tri­al before a racial­ly or reli­gious­ly biased judge, or exe­cu­tion dates that inter­fered with ongo­ing judicial review. 

Texas’ aggres­sive exe­cu­tion sched­ule also illus­trates its sta­tus as an out­lier in its use of the death penal­ty and the stark dif­fer­ences in approach between the deci­sion­mak­ers empow­ered to end pris­on­ers’ lives and those eval­u­at­ing whether new defen­dants should be sent to death row. Nationally, exe­cu­tions have remained near his­toric lows for the past five years, but Texas has car­ried out more than any oth­er state. In 2018, Texas exe­cut­ed more pris­on­ers than the rest of the United States com­bined and, if most of the sched­uled exe­cu­tions go through, could do so again in 2019. 

Prisoners sen­tenced to death in Texas are exe­cut­ed at a rate triple the nation­al aver­age. The process of rub­ber­stamp­ing — in which state court judges adopt as fact the plead­ings sub­mit­ted by pros­e­cu­tors — is com­mon­place, and the Texas fed­er­al courts rou­tine­ly defer to this state court ​“factfind­ing.” The Texas state and fed­er­al courts are also out­liers in deny­ing resources to defense coun­sel and in resist­ing enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, even in the face of clear direc­tives from the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The state’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate pace of exe­cu­tions con­tin­ues even as pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing and cap­i­tal juries are impos­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er new death sen­tences. New death sen­tences have fall­en from an aver­age of more than 40 per year in 1998 – 2000 to five per year in 2016 – 2018. Fewer death sen­tences have been imposed in Texas in the last five years than in any oth­er five-year peri­od in the mod­ern era of capital punishment.

The table below presents key infor­ma­tion about each of the indi­vid­u­als who are the sub­jects of the thir­teen Texas death war­rants. (For more detail on these cas­es, see Texas Schedules Thirteen Executions in Last Five Months of 2019.)

Key: A = Asian, B = Black, L = Latino/​a, W = White, M = Male, F = Female