New Report from Texas Defender Service Examines Ongoing Racial Disparities in Harris County Death Penalty Practices and Recommends Reforms

A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled “Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was published on February 22, 2024 and is the latest in series of TDS reports on use of the death penalty in Texas. The report focuses on Harris County’s outlier death penalty practices, both within the state and nationally. While more than half of the 254 counties in Texas have never imposed a death sentence, Harris County is responsible for most of the state’s current death row population. Aside from Texas, Harris County has executed more people than any state in the U.S. Of the last 21 people sentenced to death in the county, 20 people (95%) have been people of color, 15 of whom were Black men. Among these 21 cases, 17 post-conviction appeals citing race-based bias during trial or sentencing have been filed. The number of new death sentences have decreased since District Attorney Kim Ogg took office in 2017; however, of the three death sentences sought by D.A. Ogg, two were against people of color.

“Racism should play no part in how we administer justice in Harris County,” said Estelle Hebron-Jones, Director of Special Projects at TDS and the primary author of the report. “Historic data show that Black defendants are three times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated white defendants. Twenty percent of death sentences against Black men have been permanently overturned due to errors. These numbers show a history of race-based prosecution.”

The report recommends that (1) state agencies, especially the Harris County District Attorney, implement robust data collection practices, share the information publicly, and use data-driven insights to change procedures; that (2) judges undergo evidence-based training to understand racial bias; and that (3) state legislators pass a Texas Racial Justice Act to streamline post-conviction review based on discriminatory practices. 

Published on the seven-year anniversary of Buck v. Davis (2017), in which the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a death sentence due to racist expert testimony, the report traces capital punishment’s racist roots in the former slave-holding state. Harris County was the site of at least four racial terror lynchings from 1882 to 1928. The report provides many examples of the racism historically prevalent among educational, political, and judicial institutions, including the Ku Klux Klan sponsoring political candidates in the 1920s and the Houston Bar Association only allowing white members from 1870 to 1965. 

The report “… powerfully exposes the banality of racism in Harris County’s criminal legal system,” said Innocence Project executive director Christina Swarns, who argued Mr. Buck’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court. “This data powerfully undermines the integrity of our court system and demands a systematic commitment to understanding and addressing the deep and arbitrary racial disparities that pervade and distort the administration of justice.”