Death Penalty

On July 24, Texas is scheduled to execute Lonnie Johnson.  If this happens, he will be the 100^th person convicted in Harris County (Houston and surroundings) to be executed since Texas restarted its conveyor belt of death in 1982.  That's 100.  More than any other state (except Texas itself).  This is the County notorious for its sleeping lawyers, and infamous for the Houston Police Department crime lab fiasco.  Investigations into this lab's many, many, many problems have revealed such tidbits at: faulty serology, discredited DNA work, errors in analyzing drugs, flawed ballistics, faked test results, and 280 mislabled, untagged, or improperly stored boxes of evidence.  The Houston Chronicle continues to monitor the whole sordid affair, but none of these revelations has slowed down Harris County's ability send people to their deaths at a record pace. 

According to a short report published today by Amnesty International, in the "modern" era of executions, i.e. since 1977, Harris County, with 1.3% of the U.S. population and 1-2% of U.S. murders, has been responsible for 9% of all men executed in the U.S. (and 18% --  2 out of 11 -- of all women).  This year, so far, 6 out of the 30 executed were sent to the death house from Harris County.  And, in addition to Lonnie Johnson, there are two more from Harris County scheduled in the next two months ...

What makes Harris County so "successful" at generating death sentences?  One reason may be the incestuous relationship between prosecutors, elected judges and even defense lawyers:

Harris County prosecutors have been assisted in producing their steady output of condemned defendants by the substantial number of criminal trial judges (22) in the county with jurisdiction over capital cases. A majority of these judges - elected to four-year terms in partisan elections - are former prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Of the 21 filled judgeships as of July 2007, at least 19 were previously Harris County prosecutors - and all had run for office on the Republican Party ticket. In 2001, when at least 20 of the 22 judges were former county prosecutors, 16 had reportedly received election campaign contributions from defence lawyers who had been appointed by trial judges to represent defendants charged with capital crimes between 1998 and 2000.

In other words - politics.  But if politics can create an efficient killing machine, politics can dismantle it too.  In special, high-death jurisdictions like Harris County, prosecutors and elected judges need to be reminded that they do not have a blank check.  They need to hear from us.

- Brian at PADP