Hispanic Heritage Month: Travis County, Texas District Attorney José Garza

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), DPI is posting a weekly feature on Hispanic or Latino/a people who have had a significant impact on the death penalty in the U.S. This post highlights José Garza, District Attorney of Travis County, Texas.

José Garza, a former public defender, took office as Travis County District Attorney in 2021, after running on a platform of criminal justice reform, including a pledge not to seek the death penalty. On his campaign website in 2020, he stated that “the Death Penalty is morally and ethically wrong, does not serve as a deterrent, has proven to be applied arbitrarily at best, and comes at tremendous financial costs.” 

Before his time in office, Mr. Garza experienced many faults within the criminal justice system firsthand. While working as a public defender for cases on the Texas-Mexico border, Mr. Garza recognized the unequal treatment of different communities in the criminal justice system. He specifically noted that people of color, working people, and immigrants faced the harshest punishments. Because of his experience, Mr. Garza has made it his mission to help these communities in Texas. “They need a criminal justice system that lifts up working-class communities of color, not one that locks them up,” Mr. Garza told the National Partnership for Pretrial Justice. 

Since his campaign, Mr. Garza has vowed to never seek the death penalty in Travis County. In 2020, Mr. Garza’s campaign posted on Facebook saying, “it is time to end the machinery of death in Travis County.” Mr. Garza has intervened in favor of the defendant in the U.S. Supreme Court case Escobar v. Texas. In this case, Areli Escobar was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a woman in his apartment complex. No eyewitnesses linked him to the crime, and the prosecution’s case relied heavily on the Austin crime lab’s forensic testing of Mr. Escobar’s clothes and items found at the crime scene. After the Austin Police Department crime lab was shut down in 2016 for widespread problems with evidence handling and testing, Mr. Escobar sought relief in Texas courts.Mr. Garza voiced his support for the defendant’s call for relief and shared his view on the importance of fair trials. “We believe it’s really important for someone accused of a crime to have a jury that has access to complete and accurate facts,” Mr. Garza said. 

Following the reinstitution of the death penalty in Texas in the 1970s, Travis County has sentenced 22 people to death and executed 8 people. Mr. Garza has made an effort to decrease this number in Travis County. According to the Texarkana Gazette, Mr. Garza’s policies include reviewing existing capital cases for signs of wrongful conviction or misconduct. His platform states that he will review cases “to ensure that there are no forensic, evidentiary, or legal issues that should cause the conviction to be called into question.” Although Texas currently leads the nation in capital punishment, Mr. Garza is attempting to shift this narrative in Travis County.