The Texas Criminal Jurisprudence Committee of the House of Representatives heard tes­ti­mo­ny on March 29 regard­ing HB 1641, a bill that would put a hold on exe­cu­tions while the death penal­ty was being stud­ied. Charles Terrell, for­mer Chairman of the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, sup­port­ed the mora­to­ri­um in a state­ment to the com­mit­tee, express­ing con­cerns about: ​“fair­ness to those con­vict­ed on the lim­it­ed tes­ti­mo­ny of wit­ness­es, racial fair­ness in some areas of our state, the absence of DNA test­ing where it was pos­si­ble to do so, and my belief that a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is far worse than a death sen­tence for young offend­ers.” Former Texas Gov. Mark White (pic­tured) also wrote a state­ment to the Committee in favor of the bill, stat­ing that ​“there are more safe­guards beyond care­ful guber­na­to­r­i­al review that the State of Texas should put in place to decrease the like­li­hood of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent indi­vid­ual and to increase fun­da­men­tal fair­ness in our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem.” White also wrote that ​“regard­less of our views on the death penal­ty itself, we all have pro­found con­cerns that the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is deeply flawed and believe that all per­sons fac­ing the death penal­ty are enti­tled to the fun­da­men­tal rights guar­an­teed by the Constitution.” 

(M. Landauer, ​“Widespread sup­port for a mora­to­ri­um on dis­play today in Austin,” Dallas Morning News, March 29, 2011). See Recent Legislation, Innocence and New Voices. The next exe­cu­tion sched­uled in Texas is of Cleve Foster on April 5. Foster is chal­leng­ing the state’s adop­tion of a new lethal injec­tion pro­to­col with­out an oppor­tu­ni­ty for public review.

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