Shameful record of executions

BY BOB RAY SANDERS
bobray@star-telegram.com
Imagine being sentenced to 50 years in the state penitentiary.

Then consider how you might feel — what kind of person you might have 
become — as you reached the halfway point of your scheduled time in 
prison, marking off the calendar year 25 of being behind bars.

Now, imagine that you were innocent of the crime for which you had 
been convicted.

You might think that it couldn’t get any worse than that, right?

Well, picture this: You’re not just in a regular penitentiary cell, 
but on Death Row and even scheduled to die for a crime you did not 
commit.

Horrible, nightmarish images all.

Sadly there are too many people in this country, and particularly in 
Texas, who cannot only envision those and similar scenarios, but have 
lived them.

Only God knows how many innocent people have been wrongly convicted, 
although any one would be too many. We do know there is a growing 
list of individuals who have been exonerated through DNA testing, 
generally coming after the "victim" of the state already has lost 
many years of his life locked away from family, friends and society 
as a whole.

Twenty-four ex-Death Row prisoners from across the country will meet 
Friday at the state Capitol in Austin to call for a moratorium on 
executions in Texas and for the creation of a statewide commission on 
wrongful convictions, said Kurt Rosenberg, executive director of 
Witness to Innocence, a Philadelphia-based organization of former 
Death Row inmates and their families.

Their news conference will be at 2 p.m. in the Speaker’s Committee Room.

The men who will appear at the Capitol have served "a combined total 
of nearly 200 years on death row for crimes they did not commit," 
Rosenberg said in a statement announcing the news conference.

"Last month, Texas became third in the nation in death-row 
exonerations when Michael Blair was the 130th person exonerated from 
death row," he said. "Blair’s exoneration came on the heels of a 
statement by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins that he 
will re-examine nearly 40 death penalty convictions and would halt 
executions, if necessary, to give the reviews time to proceed."

Watkins’ announcement also came in the wake of Dallas County’s record-
setting number of overall exonerations — 18 since 2001.

"Witness to Innocence believes the rest of the state should follow 
Watkins’ lead and halt executions while it studies its broken death 
penalty system, which has exonerated nine people from death row since 
1987, third only to Florida and Illinois in death-row exonerations," 
Rosenberg said.

More and more leaders are recognizing that we do have a broken system 
in the Lone Star State.

Last summer the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced the 
creation of a Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit to examine 
weaknesses in the criminal justice system. And, Chief Justice Wallace 
Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court is among those calling for a 
statewide innocence commission.

It makes sense that while we recognize an imperfect system with 
weaknesses that must be examined and corrected, there ought not to be 
any more executions in Texas until those issues have been fully 
addressed.

The Star-Telegram is on record supporting a moratorium on executions.

I, of course, have long been on record calling for the abolition of 
the death penalty in this state.

Rosenberg points out that, as of Monday, "Texas has executed 417 
people since the reinstatement of the death penalty, accounting for 
nearly 40 percent of all executions nationwide, including 12 so far 
this year.

An additional 16 executions are scheduled in Texas this fall and 
winter, and in the next few weeks the state is expected to set a 
record of 10 executions in 30 days."

That is not a record of which we should be proud.

Instead, it ought to be a badge of shame.

Bob Ray Sanders’ column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775

http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1003495.html