OUTLIER COUNTIES: Dallas County, Texas Imposing Fewer Death Sentences After Years of Discrimination

With 55 exe­cu­tions since the 1970s, Dallas County, Texas, ranks sec­ond among all U.S. coun­ties — behind only Harris County (Houston), Texas — in the num­ber of pris­on­ers it has put to death. It is also among the 2% of coun­ties that account for more than half of all pris­on­ers on death row across the coun­try, and pro­duced sev­en new death sen­tences and one resen­tence between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.5% of all U.S. coun­ties dur­ing that period. 

Dallas County has a long his­to­ry of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, evi­denced most telling­ly in its biased jury selec­tion prac­tices. Long-time Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, whose tenure in office spanned the years 1951 to 1987, once told an assis­tant pros­e­cu­tor, ​“If you ever put anoth­er n****r on a jury, you’re fired.” An office man­u­al first writ­ten in 1963 instruct­ed Dallas County pros­e­cu­tors not to ​“take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a mem­ber of any minor­i­ty race on a jury, no mat­ter how rich or how well educated.” 

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court took notice of what Justice Anthony Kennedy described as a ​“cul­ture of dis­crim­i­na­tion” that was ​“suf­fused with bias against African-Americans,” and over­turned the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Thomas Joe Miller-El because pros­e­cu­tors removed 10 of the 11 Black poten­tial jurors on the basis of race. 

51 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed of seri­ous crimes in Dallas County since 1989, includ­ing Randall Dale Adams, who had been sen­tenced to death after wit­ness­es for the pros­e­cu­tion com­mit­ted per­jury at his trial. 

Dallas has shown signs of change in recent years. No new death sen­tences have been imposed since 2013. That year, District Attorney Craig Watkins said he would advo­cate for the Texas leg­is­la­ture to pass a Racial Justice Act, per­mit­ting death row pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their sen­tences based upon sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. Former Assistant District Attorney James Fry said in 2009 that con­cerns about inno­cence had changed his views on the death penal­ty: ​“For years I sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but I have come to believe that our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is inca­pable of ade­quate­ly dis­tin­guish­ing between the inno­cent and guilty. It is rep­re­hen­si­ble and immoral to gam­ble with life and death.”