Voters Oust Prosecutors in Outlier Death Penalty Counties, Retain Governors Who Halted Executions

Prosecutors in three coun­ties known for their out­lier prac­tices on the death penal­ty were defeat­ed by chal­lengers run­ning on reform plat­forms, while vot­ers in Oregon and Washington re-elect­ed gov­er­nors who act­ed to halt exe­cu­tions. In Hillsborough County, Florida, Democrat Andrew Warren defeat­ed Republican incum­bent Mark Ober (pic­tured, l.). Warren pledged to seek the death penal­ty less often and estab­lish a unit to uncov­er wrong­ful con­vic­tions. In Harris County, Texas, incum­bent Devon Anderson (pic­tured, r.) was defeat­ed by Democratic chal­lenger Kim Ogg. Ogg ran on a plat­form of broad crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and had received sup­port from the Black Lives Matter move­ment. Harris County leads the nation in exe­cu­tions and is sec­ond only to Los Angeles in the num­ber of peo­ple on its death row. Ogg had said that the death penal­ty had cre­at­ed ​“a ter­ri­ble image for our city and our coun­ty” and pledged that, “[u]nder an Ogg admnin­is­tra­tion, you will see very few death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions.” Brandon Falls, District Attorney of Jefferson County, Alabama, lost his seat to Charles Todd Henderson, who does not sup­port the death penal­ty and said he plans to ​“bring about real crim­i­nal jus­tice reform.” Hillsborough, Harris, and Jefferson all rank among the 2% of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of death row inmates in the U.S., and were among the 16 most pro­lif­ic death sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the U.S. between 2010 – 2015. ​“People are scru­ti­niz­ing their local crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tems, and peo­ple are real­iz­ing how much pow­er state attor­neys have, and they are see­ing elec­tions as a way to change those results,” Deborrah Brodsky, direc­tor of the Project on Accountable Justice at Florida State University, said. In guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions, vot­ers re-elect­ed gov­er­nors who had halt­ed exe­cu­tions in their states. Washington vot­ers re-elect­ed Governor Jay Inslee, who imposed a death penal­ty mora­to­ri­um, and Oregon vot­ers gave a full term to Governor Kate Brown, who had extend­ed her pre­de­ces­sor’s mora­to­ri­um and pledged to keep the mora­to­ri­um in effect if elect­ed. In North Carolina, vot­ers defeat­ed incum­bent Governor Pat McCrory, who had sup­port­ed efforts to repeal the state’s Racial Justice Act. 

(J. Smith, ​“Overzealous Prosecutors Ousted Across the Country, Showing There Is Still Hope for Reform,” The Intercept, November 10, 2016; R. Balko, ​“Believe it or not, it was a pret­ty good night for crim­i­nal-jus­tice reform,” The Washington Post, November 9, 2016; M. Chammah, ​“These Prosecutors Campaigned for Less Jail Time — And Won,” The Marshall Project, November 9, 2016; J. Herskovitz, ​“U.S. death sen­tences wane, even in Texas coun­ty with most exe­cu­tions,” Reuters, November 7, 2016.) See Recent Legislative Activity and Public Opinion.