NEW VOICES: Law Enforcement Officials in Washington, Texas Call for End of Their States’ Death Penalties

Drawing on their experience in the criminal justice system, elected law enforcement officials in Washington and Texas have urged repeal of their states’ death-penalty laws.

In Washington, King County (Seattle) prosecutor Dan Satterberg (pictured, left), a Republican, testified January 22 before the Senate Law and Justice Committee in favor of a bipartisan legislative proposal to repeal Washington’s capital-punishment statute. Telling the Texas Tribune “[w]e’re killing the wrong people,” former Dallas County sheriff Lupe Valdez (pictured, right), currently a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for governor of Texas, announced her opposition to Texas’s death penalty.

Satterberg’s testimony came on the heels of an op-ed he wrote in The Seattle Times in support of SB6052, a bill that would prospectively abolish capital punishment. Satterberg, who has worked in the King County prosecutor’s office for 27 years and witnessed Washington’s last execution in 2010, wrote: “It is my duty to report that the death penalty law in our state is broken and cannot be fixed. It no longer serves the interests of public safety, criminal justice, or the needs of victims.”

Sitting alongside Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Satterberg told the committee, “If you look at it carefully and take away the politics and the emotion, by any measure this doesn’t work. Our criminal justice system would be stronger without the death penalty.”

The abolition bill was introduced by Republican state Sen. Maureen Walsh, with bipartisan co-sponsorship, at Ferguson’s request. In a news release, Ferguson said: “The death penalty is expensive, unfair, disproportionate — and it doesn’t work. More than a third of all U.S. states have abolished the death penalty. Washington should join them.” The bill passed the committee by a 4-3 vote on January 25.

In a Texas candidate’s forum in Austin, Valdez—who served as sheriff from 2005 to 2017 before resigning to run for governor—referenced on-going concerns about wrongful capital convictions and wrongful executions. “Some of those [sentenced to death in Texas] have been exonerated,” Valdez said. “We cannot continue being in a situation where we risk killing a person who is not guilty.”

Since 1973, 13 people have been exonerated from death row in Texas, and questions have been raised about the guilt of several executed prisoners, including Carlos DeLuna, Cameron Willingham, and Robert Pruett. Valdez joined another leading Democratic contender for governor, businessman Andrew White, in opposing the death penalty. Incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, a former Texas attorney general, is a strong supporter of capital punishment.