Mark White (offi­cial por­trait, pic­tured), a for­mer gov­er­nor and attor­ney gen­er­al of Texas who became an out­spo­ken crit­ic of the death penal­ty, died on August 5 at the age of 77. Mr. White served as gov­er­nor from 1983 to 1987, dur­ing which time he over­saw 19 exe­cu­tions. In an unsuc­cess­ful come­back bid in 1990, a cam­paign ad tout­ed his strong sup­port for the death penal­ty, fea­tur­ing pho­tos of the men exe­cut­ed dur­ing his tenure as gov­er­nor and declar­ing, ​“Only a gov­er­nor can make exe­cu­tions hap­pen. I did and I will.” Over time, how­ev­er, his views changed and he became an advo­cate for the wrong­ful­ly con­demned. In May 2014, White pub­lished a reflec­tive op-ed in Politico, in which he declared that the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty is egre­gious­ly flawed. Citing the botched April 2014 exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, White wrote that the death penal­ty lends itself to mis­takes and abuse. Lockett died of a heart attack approx­i­mate­ly 40 min­utes after the state began admin­is­ter­ing an untest­ed lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. ​“As I’ve watched how the death penal­ty has been admin­is­tered over the years,” White wrote, ​“both in Texas and around the coun­try, it has become increas­ing­ly clear to me that we just don’t do a good job at any phase of the process, from ensur­ing that cap­i­tal tri­als are fair to the actu­al han­dling of exe­cu­tions them­selves.” White wrote that the death-penal­ty sys­tem is plagued by arbi­trari­ness. ​“We now have incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence that America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does a poor job of deter­min­ing who deserves the death penal­ty,” he said, not­ing that 12 Texans had been among the many peo­ple released from death row after evi­dence of their inno­cence emerged. Since the pub­li­ca­tion of White’s op-ed, that num­ber has risen to 13. As a ​“recov­er­ing politi­cian,” White vol­un­teered to work with reform groups and inno­cence orga­ni­za­tions in an attempt to redress his con­cerns about the unfair­ness of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In 2012, he lent his voice to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s efforts to obtain a fair sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Duane Buck—who had been sen­tenced to death after a defense men­tal health expert, and then the pros­e­cu­tor, told the jury that he posed an increase risk of vio­lence to soci­ety because he is black — nar­rat­ing the video, A Broken Promise in Texas: Race, the Death Penalty, and the Duane Buck Case. He also served as the long-time co-chair of The Constitution Project​’s Death Penalty Committee, on which he worked with oth­er for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, gov­er­nors, and cor­rec­tions offi­cials to advance bi-par­ti­san efforts at death-penalty reform.

(M. Ward, M. Rhor, and M. Dempsey, ​“Former Texas Gov. Mark White dead at 77,” Houston Chronicle, August 5, 2017; ​“Former Democratic Texas Gov. Mark White Dies at 77,” Associated Press, August 5, 2017; G. Sloan, ​“Remembering Governor Mark White,” The Constitution Project, August 7, 2017; M. White, ​“Why I Changed My Mind About the Death Penalty,” Politico, May 5, 2014.) See Texas and Arbitrariness.

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