The Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced a change in its stance on the death penal­ty in a recent edi­to­r­i­al mark­ing the 500^th exe­cu­tion in Texas. While the news­pa­per had pre­vi­ous­ly endorsed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, it now sup­ports the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The edi­tors said that moral grounds alone are enough to war­rant end­ing the death penal­ty, but they also cit­ed a vari­ety of prob­lems in Texas’s use of the death penal­ty, includ­ing geo­graph­i­cal and racial dis­par­i­ties in sen­tenc­ing, and the state’s ​“embarass­ing record of wrong­ful con­vic­tion.” The paper point­ed to the decline in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions as evi­dence that the death penal­ty is no longer nec­es­sary, con­clud­ing, ​“Abolishing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would nei­ther demean the mem­o­ry of vic­tims nor deny any of them jus­tice. Instead, it would make our soci­ety as a whole more just, more moral­ly con­sis­tent, and cer­tain­ly more humane.” Read the full edi­to­r­i­al below.

It’s time to halt executions in Texas

The fig­ure 500 is sober­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it is applied to peo­ple and their deaths.

On Wednesday evening, bar­ring inter­ven­tion by a court or the gov­er­nor, Texas will car­ry out its 500^th death sen­tence since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1974.

Between 1924 (when the state took charge of exe­cu­tions from its coun­ties) and 1964, the start of a decade-long mora­to­ri­um, the Lone Star State per­formed 361 killings by electrocution.

Texas has the brag­ging rights for its fre­quen­cy of ulti­mate pun­ish­ment, lead­ing the nation even though oth­er states have more inmates on Death Row.

These large num­bers rep­re­sent peo­ple, indi­vid­u­als with names who, although con­vict­ed of hor­ri­ble crimes and deserv­ing pun­ish­ment, should not have their deaths deter­mined by flawed human beings act­ing in the name of the state.

Kimberly McCarthy, if her sen­tence is car­ried out short­ly after 6 p.m. Wednesday, will have the dis­tinc­tion of being that 500^th per­son (and only the fourth woman) to be exe­cut­ed in Texas since the death penal­ty was reinstated.

It is time — in fact, long past — for Texas to get out of the killing business.

A char­ac­ter in an 1889 short sto­ry, The Bet by Anton Chekhov, makes a com­pelling argu­ment dur­ing a din­ner par­ty debate on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. He bold­ly states, ​“The State is not God. It has no right to take away that which it can­not give back, if it should so desire.”

Precisely.

On moral grounds alone, Texas should abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as six oth­er states have done in the last six years. Maryland become the most recent in May.

Just as the Supreme Court declared in 1972, the death penal­ty is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, and its appli­ca­tion con­tin­ues to be arbi­trary and capricious.

Whether a killer receives a death sen­tence can vary accord­ing to many fac­tors, includ­ing the coun­ty where the crime occurs. The costs of pros­e­cut­ing such cas­es and pro­vid­ing court-appoint­ed lawyers are too high for some coun­ties to absorb. Poor rur­al coun­ties are less like­ly than large urban ones to seek the death penalty.

Death Row tends to be occu­pied by the poor, as rich peo­ple sel­dom are sent there. And minori­ties are over-rep­re­sent­ed. Of the 283 peo­ple on Texas’s Death Row, 39.2 per­cent are black, 29.7 per­cent are Hispanic and 29.7 per­cent are white, state figures show.

Although no one is cer­tain that an inno­cent per­son has ever been exe­cut­ed, Texas has an embar­rass­ing record of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, as evi­denced by the num­ber of recent prisoner exonerations.

Progress has been made on lim­it­ing exe­cu­tions in cer­tain cas­es, and in reduc­ing the over­all num­ber of cap­i­tal cas­es and death sen­tences. For exam­ple, recent Supreme Court rul­ings pro­hib­it the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly ill and peo­ple who were under age 18 when the crime was committed.

After 2005, when Texas began allow­ing prison sen­tences of life with­out parole in cap­i­tal cas­es, jurors have been more inclined to hand down that sen­tence instead of death.

Although a Gallup poll shows 63 per­cent of Americans still favor cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions has dropped by more than half in the past 15 years, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Texas exe­cut­ed 15 peo­ple last year, com­pared to 40 in 2000. McCarthy, con­vict­ed of rob­bing and mur­der­ing a 70-year-old Dallas woman, would become the eighth per­son to die by lethal injec­tion this year. Seven oth­er exe­cu­tions are sched­uled through November.

Proponents of the death penal­ty argue that it is the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for peo­ple who take a life, often in the most heinous way.

The vic­tims, they say, deserve jus­tice, and killing their killers is the best way to mete it out.

Abolishing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would nei­ther demean the mem­o­ry of vic­tims nor deny any of them jus­tice. Instead, it would make our soci­ety as a whole more just, more moral­ly con­sis­tent and cer­tain­ly more humane.

Texas retired ​“Old Sparky,” its elec­tric chair, in 1977.

It is time to per­ma­nent­ly close our infa­mous death cham­ber.

(Editorial, ​“It’s time to halt exe­cu­tions,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 22, 2013.) See Editorials and New Voices.