Reasons For The High Number of Executions
There are a variety of proposed legal and cultural explanations as to why Texas has more executions than any other state.
- One major reason is due to population size – Texas has the second-largest population of any state, trailing only California. However, while California's death row is larger than Texas'; since 1976 (when Gregg v. Georgia once again permitted the imposition of the death penalty) Texas has executed over 480 inmates, while California has executed only 13 and none since January 17, 2006.
- Another reason is due to Texas' political climate, which generally leans conservative and in favor of capital punishment. Since 1994, all nine seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (the highest criminal court in Texas, which on direct appeal reviews all death penalty cases) have been held by the Republican Party (in Texas, the judges are elected except to fill vacant terms). In addition, the members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (which can recommend, but not order, commutation of a sentence to the Governor) are gubernatorial appointees, and the Republican Party has held the Governor's office since 1998.
- Another reason is due to the federal appellate structure – federal appeals from Texas are made to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Michael Sharlot, dean of the University of Texas at Austin Law School, found the Fifth Circuit to be a "much more conservative circuit" than the Ninth Circuit to which federal appeals from California are made. According to him, the Fifth is "more deferential to the popular will" that is strongly pro-death penalty and creates few legal obstacles to execution within its jurisdiction.
Texas may have a much lower rate of death sentencing than other states, according to a study by Cornell University faculty members. The study showed that states with more objective laws defining a death penalty offense (such as Texas; as shown in the Capital Offenses section above Texas has defined specific, objective circumstances which constitute a capital murder offense) sentenced defendants to death less (about 1.9 percent in 1977-99) than states whose laws were more subjective in defining a death penalty offense (which assigned it about 2.7 percent during that period).
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In Texas
Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons, high, number and/or executions:
“One of the reasons for the failure of feminism to dislodge deeply held perceptions of male and female behaviour was its insistence that women were victims, and men powerful patriarchs, which made a travesty of ordinary people’s experience of the mutual interdependence of men and women.”
—Rosalind Coward (b. 1953)
“It’s an old trick now, God knows, but it works every time. At the very moment women start to expand their place in the world, scientific studies deliver compelling reasons for them to stay home.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Ephesians, 6:12.
St. Paul’s words were used by William Blake as an epigraph to The Four Zoas (c. 1800)
“... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“[Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn’t executions be public?”
—Phil Donahue (b. 1935)