We urge everyone in Texas and our friends worldwide to take action leading up to the 500th execution to let Texas know that it should stop executions with a moratorium and begin the process of repealing the death penalty.

Let us know if you plan any actions to protest 500 executions in Texas.

We originally posted this information on December 12, 2012, but because there have been more execution dates set, we updated the post on February 4 and again on May 9 to reflect the new date for the 500th execution.

Texas is nearing 500 executions in the modern era since the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty was constitutional. Texas conducted its first execution after the ruling in 1982.

To express your opposition to any execution, you can contact Governor Rick Perry’s office at 512 463 2000. If you call after business hours, you can leave a voice mail message. During business hours, someone should answer the phone. You can also send a message using a form on Perry’s official website.

498) Jefferey Williams, May 15, 2013

TDCJ Info on Williams

499) Elroy Chester III, June 12, 2013

TDCJ Info on Elroy Chester

500) Kimberly McCarthy, June 26, 2013

TDCJ Info on McCarthy

501) Rigoberto Avila Jr July 10, 2013

TDCJ Info on Avila

502) John Quintanilla Jr. July 16, 2103

TDCJ Info on Quintanilla

503) Vaughn Ross, July 18, 2013

TDCJ Info on Ross

504) Douglas Feldman, July 31, 2013

TDCJ Info on Feldman

505) Robert Garza, September 19, 2013

TDCJ Info on Garza

506) Arturo Diaz September 26, 2013

TDCJ Info on Diaz

Five people were executed from Dallas County, two from Bexar County, two from Montgomery County, one from Harris County, one from Gregg County, one from Polk County, one from Cherokee County, one from Jefferson County and one from Tarrant County.

Since December 7, 1982, the state of Texas has executed 492 people. There have been 253 executions in Texas since Rick Perry took office in December 2000.

2011 saw the lowest number of executions in 15 years dating back to 1996. The highest number of executions was 40 in 2000.

So far, 9 people have been sentenced to death in 2012 in Texas - one more than in 2011. New death sentences have declined from their high in the late 90s. In 1999, there were 48 people sentenced to death. Harris County, where Houston is located, did not send anyone to death row in 2012.

After three convictions and death sentences, all of which were at least partially overturned on appeal, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced in August 2012 that it would drop efforts to execute Anthony Pierce, who had been on death row since 1978.

88.8 percent of the nine new death sentences handed out in 2012 in Texas have been given to people of color. Of the nine people sentenced to death so far in Texas in 2012, seven are African-American, one is Hispanic and one white. One of the nine persons is a woman.

The number of new death sentences has declined over the last several years in large part because people who serve on juries are increasingly choosing life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty, because members of juries have read about so many mistakes in the system when innocent people have been convicted only to be exonerated years later.

Cathy Henderson, who has been on death row in Texas for 17 years, was granted a new trial in 2012. The trial court said in its ruling in May that she “has proven by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted her of capital murder in light of her new evidence”.  Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg has said she will retry Henderson.

In September, Texas executed Cleve “Sarge” Foster who had received three previous stays of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. Read a report from Gloria Rubac, who was with Foster’s family in Huntsville on the day of the execution.

John Balentine received a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2012, less than an hour before he was due to be put to death in Texas. Balentine argued he deserved a reprieve because an ineffective trial lawyer failed to present mitigating evidence, such as emotional problems and a difficult upbringing, that could have led to a life sentence.

Two people on death row died in custody in 2012: Santos Minjarez from San Antonio died Jan. 14, 2012 in Galveston, six days after he was transferred from death row. The cause of death was septic shock and multiple organ failure.  Selwyn Davis of Austin was found dead in his death row cell on July 20, 2012 of suicide.

More than three decades after he was sent to death row, Delma Banks Jr. in 2012 agreed to accept a life sentence for the 1980 slaying of acquaintance Richard Whitehead – a murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Banks, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury of the slaying of 16-year-old Whitehead (white) near Nash, Texas, in 1980.

After 12 years of organizing and lobbying by ordinary grassroots Democrats across the state as well as by exonerated former death row inmates, the Texas Democratic Party has adopted a platform that calls for repealing the death penalty in Texas. “Democrats Against the Death Penalty”, which was formed in 2004, held a meeting at the TDP State Convention in June 2012. Watch a powerful video of Clarence Brandley, an innocent man who spent ten years on Texas death row for a crime he did not commit, speaking at the meeting of “Democrats Against the Death Penalty” on June 8, 2012 at the Texas Democratic Party State Convention in Houston.

In July, the Austin Human Rights Commission passed a resolution calling for Texas to repeal the death penalty and for a statewide moratorium on executions.

In July, Texas changed to a one drug method to carry out executions instead of its previous three-drug method, because of short supply in drugs that was caused by pressure on drug companies from people in the drugs producing countries who are opposed to executions.

In October, Todd Willingham’s family officially requested a pardon for him from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Rick Perry. No action has yet been taken on the request.

According to KTBC in Austin, hundreds of people rallied at the Texas Capitol at the 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty on November 3, 2012. Three death row survivors from Witness to Innocence attended the march, including Ron Keine (watch video).

Each autumn since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of the year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The annual march is a coming together of activists, family members of those on death row, family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty, community leaders, exonerated and innocent death row survivors and all those calling for repeal of the death penalty.

The annual march is organized as a joint project by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations and their friends, including Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Witness to Innocence, Kids Against the Death Penalty, International Socialist Organization, the Texas Civil Rights Project, The Austin Chronicle, NOKOA, Gray Panthers, Democrats for Life, and Texas Democrats Against the Death Penalty.

If you would like to list your business or organization as a sponsor of the march, please contact us.

Texas is nearing 500 executions since 1982. Rick Perry is nearing 250 executions since he became governor.

Before his execution, Todd Willingham told his parents, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.”

Before his execution, Troy Davis told his supporters in a letter, “There are so many more Troy Davises. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.”

On November 3, 2012 at 2 PM in Austin, you can join the fight for justice by attending the 13th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Now is the time to join the fight to end the death penalty! More and more people are concluding that the death penalty is a punishment that Texas can do without.

To protest this execution, call Texas Governor Rick Perry at 512 463 2000.

You can also call any member of the Texas House of Representatives and urge them to support a moratorium on execution in the next legislative session that begins in January 2013.

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Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle has more:

At 54, Marvin Wilson can’t use a telephone book. He reads and writes on a first- or second-grade level. Those who know the Southeast Texas man say he can’t match socks, he doesn’t understand what a bank account is for, he’s been known to fasten his belt to the point of nearly cutting off his circulation. The day his son was born, one sister recalled, he reverted to the familiar habit of sucking his thumb.

His IQ, according to the most valid indicator of human intelligence, is 61, below the first percentile. This was one of many clinical tests and factors that led a neuropsychologist with decades of experience to diagnose Wilson with “mild mental retardation.”

Nevertheless, at 6 p.m. Tuesday night, the state of Texas, in your name and mine, is scheduled to kill Marvin Wilson by lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court – citing the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment – banned the execution of the mentally retarded a decade ago.

But like other federal mandates, Texas has found a way around this one, too.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 2002 decision in a case called Atkins, exempted all mentally ill offenders from execution, in part because those who struggle with impulse control, for example, are less culpable for their crimes. But also because mentally ill offenders may be especially vulnerable to wrongful convictions since they’re less able to help attorneys build strong defenses.

Wilson is a textbook example. According to his attorneys’ brief, Wilson was fingered as the lead shooter by a more sophisticated accomplice, and evidence of his “confession” in the murder of police informant Jerry Williams came from the accomplice’s wife.

In Atkins, the high court held that the states, many of which had begun to ban executions of the mentally retarded on their own, had reached a national consensus that the practice was immoral.

Steinbeck’s Lennie

Of course, certain conservative factions in Texas, as usual, fell somewhere outside those evolving standards of decency. The Supreme Court left it up to the states to design procedures to implement the ban, but the state with the most active death chamber took that as an invitation to redefine the ban itself.

In a 2004 opinion, Texas’ highest court announced that, where executions were concerned, it didn’t have to define “mental retardation” the same way as other states. It didn’t even have to define it the same way it does for impaired Texas school children.

No, the fine jurists of Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals made up a new definition of “mentally retarded” especially for defendants in capital crimes. It wasn’t based on science or the generally accepted definition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. It was based on myths, stereotypes and even a fictional character: Lennie in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Forget the national consensus. The Texas court was concerned only with the Texas consensus, “the level and degree of mental retardation” that Texans would agree should be exempted from the death penalty.

“Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck’s Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt,” the court said. But someone else who didn’t meet that stereotypical description and merely had a clinical diagnosis to prove his mental retardation? Well, that’s a different story.

The court then set about redefining what it means to be mentally retarded in a capital case. The “Briseno factors” are a list of questions fact-finders should ask in criminal cases to determine whether a defendant is mentally retarded enough to be spared. The goal, of course, is to spare as few as possible.

The factors include such subjective and unscientific questions as whether a defendant can plan and lie. (My toddler is capable of both when there’s a cookie within reach.) Another question asks whether family and friends in the defendant’s life “think he was mentally retarded.” Never mind that mental retardation can be genetic and family members themselves may be impaired. The seventh, and most problematic factor invites the fact-finder to look at how the crime was perpetrated, which introduces emotion into a process that should be solely based on reason.

Wilson’s last hope

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found the lower court’s interpretation reasonable. The Texas Legislature has failed to address the issue after Gov. Rick Perry vetoed an earlier ban on such executions passed by lawmakers.

Wilson’s last hope is for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in today and grant a stay of execution so that the high court can consider his case along with another similar Texas case pending before it.

Once again we need the nation’s highest court to save us from ourselves. To remind us of our humanity. To impose on us the cruel confines of decency.

“Dear Friends,

It was with great sadness that I found out today about another suicide on Texas death row. An African American man named Selwyn Davis from Austin killed himself a few days ago. He had apparently accumulated a bunch of pills of some kind and then took them all at once. He had tried to kill himself earlier this year by cutting his wrists and throat with razor blades. But they were very dull and he didn’t die.

I hold the TDCJ responsible for his death. They house all men on death row, including those with perfect disciplinary records, in total isolation, denying all human contact.

Psychiatrist Terry Kupers, an expert on long-term isolated prison confinement, is the author of numerous articles on the subject as well as his book titled, “Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It.” He says this about isolation– it causes:
– severe anxiety;
– panic attacks;
– lethargy;
– insomnia;
– nightmares;
– dizziness;
– irrational anger, at time uncontrollable;
– confusion;
– social withdrawal;
– memory loss;
– appetite loss;
– delusions and hallucinations;
– mutilations;
– profound despair and hopelessness;
– suicidal thoughts;
– paranoia; and
– for many, a totally dysfunctional state and inability ever to live normally
outside of confinement.”

Today the Austin American-Statesman also found out about the death and reported on it:

Selwyn P. Davis, sentenced to death by a Travis County jury for the 2006 Austin murder of his girlfriend’s mother, was found dead in his cell on Texas’ death row last week, according to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Corrections officers conducting routine security checks found Davis, 30, unresponsive on the floor of his cell about 9 p.m. Friday, spokesman Jason Clark wrote in an email.

“Staff began life saving measures, called 911, and took the offender to the unit infirmary,” Clark wrote. “An ambulance then transported Davis to Livingston Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced deceased by an attending physician at 10:04 pm.”

Clark said the cause of death is unknown and that the department’s Office of Inspector General will investigate the death, which is routine.

Davis stabbed Regina Lara to death in her 38 1/2 Street apartment on Aug. 22, 2006.

Resolution on the Death Penalty

WHEREAS, it is appropriate for city governments to give advice on matters of concern to them when actions of the state affect those cities; and

WHEREAS, in Texas a death penalty case can cost taxpayers three times more than seeking and obtaining a sentence of life in prison and of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for a term of life in prison, the additional cost of which is borne by all Texans; and

WHEREAS local taxpayers can be faced with the financial burden of settling lawsuits when innocent people are wrongfully convicted or executed because of problems in the criminal justice system.  For instance, the City of Austin settled two wrongful conviction lawsuits in 2003 brought by Richard Danziger and Christopher Ochoa for a total of more than $14 million, all paid by the citizens of Austin; and

WHEREAS Texas leads the nation in executions with 483 since 1982 (as of July 23, 2012).  The frequency of executions and the inadequacies in our criminal justice system increase the risk that an innocent person will be executed, and the execution of an innocent person by the State of Texas would be a grave injustice and would undermine public confidence in our criminal justice system; and

WHEREAS, twelve people have been exonerated of murder and released from Texas Death Row, including most recently Anthony Graves in October 2010, and 140 people have been exonerated and released from death rows in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970’s:

WHEREAS strong evidence exists in several cases that Texas has already executed innocent people, including Cameron Todd Willingham; and

WHEREAS juries and prosecutors across the nation and in Texas are opting against death in favor of life in prison without parole. In both 2010 and 2011, Texas juries approved new death sentences in only 8 instances each year, the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974. Only 6 of the 254 counties in Texas sent anyone to death row in 2011.

WHEREAS other states are increasingly turning away from the death penalty as evidenced by the legislatures in New Jersey (2007), New Mexico (2009), Illinois (2011) and Connecticut (2012) repealing the death penalty and the Supreme Court of New York ruling it unconstitutional in that state; and

WHEREAS there is no law in Texas that requires District Attorneys to seek the death penalty and district attorneys are free to choose to seek life in prison without the possibility of parole in all capital cases; and

WHEREAS, this resolution is not intended to minimize the profound pain that the families of murder victims suffer,

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the Austin Human Rights Commission recommends to the Austin City Council to encourage the State of Texas to repeal the death penalty in Texas.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Austin Human Rights Commission also supports a moratorium on executions and the creation of a “Texas Capital Punishment Commission” to:

• study the administration of capital punishment in Texas and correct any injustices or unfair processes that are found and eliminate the risk of executing innocent people; and
• study whether Texas should repeal the death penalty.

BE IT ALSO RESOLVED that the Austin Human Rights Commission recommends to the Austin City Council to encourage the Travis County District Attorney not to seek death sentences in capital murder cases and not to request execution dates for current death row prisoners who were convicted in Travis County.

Hearn was the 483rd person executed in Texas since executions resumed in 1982 after an 18 year moratorium. He was the 244th person executed under Governor Rick Perry.

From the BBC:

Before Wednesday’s execution, the three drugs used for court-ordered executions in Texas were: thiopental sodium, to sedate the prisoner; pancuronium bromide to paralyse them; and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Several states introduced the use of pentobarbital in the face of shortages of thiopental sodium, which was pulled off the market in 2010.

The European Union banned European manufacturers from exporting that drug to the US to prevent it being used in executions. Pentobarbital is also covered by the EU ban.

In Texas, the state chose to switch drugs after its supply of pancuronium bromide expired.

If Hearn is executed, he will be the 483rd person executed in Texas since executions resumed in 1982 after an 18 year moratorium. He will become the 244th person executed under Governor Rick Perry.

Call Rick Perry’s office at 512 463 2000 to register your opposition to this execution.

From The Atlantic:

Next Wednesday, July 18, reckons to be another banner day in the history of capital punishment in America. Sometime between 6 p.m. and midnight, the state of Texas is scheduled to execute a convicted murderer named Yokamon Hearn, a man who has, since early childhood, shown clear and consistent evidence of brain damage.

and

There is nothing ambiguous about the crime. It was horrific on every level. Yokamon Hearn was convicted of murdering Joseph Franklin Meziere on March 25, 1998, as part of a carjacking. Hearn and one of his co-defendants, reads a recent defense brief, “shot Mr. Meziere in the head approximately ten times, with the evidence showing that Hearn likely fired first and fired six shots.” In 2004, when Hearn faced another execution date, news reports indicated that Hearn had bragged about the crime. “This innocent victim was shot almost for sport,” noted one former local prosecutor.

So the trial was going to be a slam-dunk and it was. But it was during the penalty phase of the trial, after Hearn had been convicted of capital murder, where today’s conflict began. Here is how Hearn’s current attorneys put it, the essence of their claim:

Yokamon’s jury learned about violence, more violence, a history of burglaries, and, in sharp contrast, exceedingly superficial and inaccurate mitigation during his sentencing proceedings. Yokamon’s lawyers were the reason the jury learned almost nothing about his life. They failed to conduct a minimally adequate investigation into Yokamon’s life history when, had they done so, they would have uncovered a wealth of compelling mitigating evidence, including:

1) evidence that Yokamon’s parents were severely impaired throughout his life; 2) that he was the victim of neglect at the hands of his parents; 3) that relatives who were portrayed at trial as unflinchingly committed and capable of caring for Yokamon were not so; 4) that he had a history of mental health problems, including suicidal ideations, as a young child and that his emotional problems stemmed from his parents’ inability to parent him; 5) that he was exposed to risk factors commonly associated with brain damage; 6) that Yokamon, in fact, suffered from brain damage; and 7) that he exhibited severe impairments in day-to-day functioning consistent with brain dysfunction. [Numbers added for reference]
The failure of Yokamon’s [original] lawyers to investigate his life constituted grossly deficient performance. Absent those failures, there is a strong likelihood that one or more jurors would have concluded that Yokamon did not deserve the death penalty.

But then it got worse for Hearn because his post-trial lawyer, the one who filed his vital habeas appeal, also did not conduct a detailed investigation into Hearn’s life. So what Hearn’s attorneys are arguing today is a sort of funky capital case calculus equation: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Squared. Until March of this year, until that Martinez case that came down from the Supreme Court, such a formula (what’s formally called “Successive” or “Second” Petitions) would have given Hearn virtually no chance for relief.

In Martinez, in March, the Supreme Court declared by a 7-2 vote that defendants were entitled to have federal courts review their “ineffective assistance of counsel” claims even if those claims were otherwise procedurally barred, if the reason the claims were barred was the ineffectiveness of the lawyers litigating the first round of post-conviction habeas review. Prisoners had a right to effective counsel beyond trial and direct appeal; in other words, a scenario that seems to fit the Hearn case on point. So, back in Texas, emboldened by the Martinez opinion, Hearn’s attorneys filed a new request to have a court look at the “mitigating” evidence they had uncovered about their client’s life history, including his long history of mental impairment.

But when Hearn’s lawyers sought relief from a federal judge they were immediately shut down. U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater ruled last week that Hearn was not entitled to any further relief. Why? Because the 5th Circuit already had ruled, in a case styled Ibarra v. Thaler, that Texas didn’t have to follow the new rule outlined in Martinez. Judge Fitzwater felt duty bound to respect the 5th Circuit’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s precedent. Poof! Just like that, and not for the first time, the most stridently conservative federal appeals court in the nation had just defied the justices.

What the 5th Circuit did, in Ibarra v. Thaler, was to interpret Martinez so narrowly as to make its holding inapplicable in virtually any other case. Even though the justices in Washington had created an exception to “protect prisoners with a potentially legitimate claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel,” the 5th Circuit said that Texas’ appellate procedures vitiated the need for such an exception. Take a few minutes to try to read the Ibarra decision. Look at how hard the 5th Circuit’s majority had to twist to avoid the Supreme Court’s precedent — and to avoid giving Hearn the relief to which he is entitled.