Harris County (Houston), Texas, has exe­cut­ed more men and women than any oth­er coun­ty in the United States, but a recent poll shows that a strong major­i­ty of its res­i­dents now sup­port alter­na­tive sen­tences. A report by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University found that only 28% of respon­dents in Harris County pre­fer the death penal­ty to life with­out parole as pun­ish­ment for first-degree mur­der. The poll also found that over­all sup­port for the death penal­ty was at a 20-year low, with 56% say­ing they were in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. As pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has dropped, so have Harris County death sen­tences. The County hand­ed down a com­bined 44 death sen­tences from 1994 – 1996, but sen­tenced only 5 peo­ple to death from 2012 – 2014. Death ver­dicts are also down statewide. According to a Dallas Morning News com­men­tary, Texas imposed 11 death sen­tences in 2014, down from 39 in 1999. No death sen­tences have been imposed in the state so far this year. (Click image to enlarge.)

“There is no doubt about it. We’re see­ing a reduc­tion in the use of the death penal­ty in Texas,” Kathryn Kase, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Texas Defender Services, told the Morning News. Dr. Stephen Klineberg, the author of the Rice study, sug­gest­ed chang­ing demo­graph­ics account for what he describes as the ​“grad­ual and unmis­tak­able decline in sup­port for the death penal­ty” in Houston. ​“It’s a reflec­tion of a city pre­pared to embrace diver­si­ty and rec­og­nize that this is who we are. We may not have cho­sen it, but Houston is [in] the fore­front of the country’s reli­gious and eth­nic demographic transformation.” 

(“The 34th Annual Kinder Houston Area Survey,” Kinder Institute for Urban Research, May 5, 2015; R. Holeywell, ​“Q & A with Dr. Stephen Klineberg,” The Urban Edge Blog, May 5, 2015; Steve Blow, ​“Even in tough-on-crime Texas, death penal­ty con­vic­tions decline,” The Dallas Morning News, May 8, 2015; 2012 – 2014 sen­tenc­ing data from DPIC research.) See Public Opinion and Sentencing.

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