Death penalty in Texas: Williamson County lawmaker introduces bill to abolish it

TEXAS – A Central Texas lawmaker is pushing for the state to repeal the death penalty.

Williamson County State Representative John Bucy III (D) introduced the bill for the upcoming Texas Legislative session.

“I think my whole life I’ve been against the death penalty because I’ve thought about its use and whether it exists in our society,” Bucy said. “Financially, if you just want to look at it from an economic standpoint, we spend more money executing someone than we do keeping them in prison, so if we get it wrong, it’s really a high-stakes lose-lose situation.”

The legislation comes after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that a new execution date could be moved up for Robert Roberson.

He was sentenced to death in the early 2000s after his two-year-old daughter died. He was convicted for alleged shaken baby syndrome, but his lawyers maintain his innocence and point to current science.

“I feel like I’m becoming more interested in this Robert Roberson case, and I wanted to make sure that we continued this conversation about the lack of humanity associated with the death penalty,” Bucy said.

Texas has executed nearly 600 people since 1982, said Kristin Houle Cuellar, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

“This is more than any other state in the country,” Houle Cuellar said. “We have a pretty good reputation for the use of the death penalty in Texas.”

Death sentences have slowly fallen over the past decade, Houle Cuellar said. He believes this is partly due to the introduction of life without parole in 2005.

“Prosecutors used that discretion and chose not to seek the death penalty,” Houle Cuellar said. “Even in about 30 percent of the cases where they sought the death penalty, jurors rejected that request.”

Many lawmakers in Texas have tried to repeal the death penalty since 2007. They all failed, but Bucy thinks there’s enough momentum to try again.

“While abolishing the death penalty in Texas has been an uphill battle, we have seen the number of executions decrease,” Bucy said. “I think sentiment is changing, and I also think that as we see these specific cases come to life and we start to learn the specific stories, people are going to become increasingly concerned about the possibility of misunderstanding.”

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and State Rep. Joe Moody have also introduced similar bills, but of course they would need approval votes from other legislators when the legislative session begins early next year.

Also making national headlines is death row inmate Melissa Lucia. Last month, a judge ruled that he was innocent in the death of his two-year-old daughter, who died in 2007.

There was a brief period when execution was illegal in Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment,” according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. By 1973, Texas commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment and abolished the death penalty.

Shortly thereafter, the state amended its penal code to reintroduce the death penalty. In 1982, the state executed the first inmates under the new death penalty using lethal injection.

Houle Cuellar adds that Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Bexar counties lead the state in death sentences, and more than half of Texas counties have never imposed the death penalty.