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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Texas legislators -- yes, Texas -- are on the verge of approving a law that could result in a decline in executions nationwide.
May 10, 2005 | In January 2001, Texas Gov. Rick Perry concluded that it was time for the Texas Legislature to "take a good hard look" at allowing juries to sentence capital defendants to prison for the rest of their lives, with no chance for parole, instead of executing them. Three years later, Perry himself still had not made up his own mind on whether to give Texas juries the authority that jurors in 36 of the 38 death penalty states have. And that was too bad for Kelsey Patterson, a psychotic death-row inmate who believed his actions were controlled by implants in his brain. On May 18, 2004, Perry said he was compelled to deny Patterson clemency, despite an unprecedented 5-1 recommendation by the Texas parole board that the sentence be commuted to life in prison.
"After carefully reviewing all the facts in this case," the Republican governor said, Patterson would have to be executed because Texas had no statute mandating life without parole "and no one can guarantee this defendant would never be freed to commit other crimes were his sentence commuted."
In fact, Perry was fully aware that Patterson, a paranoid schizophrenic whom the state had once found to be legally insane, had about as much chance of being released from prison as he had of turning into a giant purple armadillo. But the governor was able to claim that Patterson might be freed because a murderer who is not sentenced to death in Texas receives a "life" sentence, which by definition means he must serve 40 years before becoming "eligible" for parole. Even though eligibility remains largely theoretical, it is a possibility, and on such nuances Kelsey Patterson was sent to the executioner.
Today, nearly a year later, Perry remains officially undecided about whether Texas should have a life-without-parole statute, and one can only assume he is still taking a good "hard look" at this not terribly abstruse issue.
Meanwhile, the Texas Legislature has been tinkering with the machinery of death, and it appears ready to approve a historic life-without-parole bill that could lead to a drastic reduction in Texas executions. And because Texas accounts for more than a third of the nation's executions, a change in Texas law would likely have a significant impact on the overall rate of executions nationwide.
Texas, as just about everyone knows, is the nation's execution capital. What most people don't understand is that many of these executions are the result of what is probably the most cynical and perverse sentencing statute in the country, a law that is deliberately misleading and designed to pressure jurors to vote for death rather than life sentences.
Because of the wording of Texas' capital sentencing law, a district attorney prosecuting a capital murder can use the same tortured argument in seeking a death sentence that Perry used in executing Patterson. He can tell jurors that unless they vote to kill the defendant, there is no "guarantee" that he will not be out on the streets murdering people again in their lifetime -- in a mere 40 years.
The prosecutors, like Perry, know that the likelihood of parole is close to nil, because the state's parole board, appointed by the governor, never grants parole to murderers. But they also know that when they tell a jury a killer could be released, jurors become alarmed and are much more inclined to vote for death as an "insurance policy" -- to insure that the killer can never go free and that they, the jurors, won't be responsible for another killing.
But why, one might ask, have Texas prosecutors fought to defend an ambiguous 40-year "life" sentence when they know it confuses juries, when the state could have a clear life-without-parole law? Why don't they trust juries to decide between a true life sentence and death?
The reason is that some prosecutors think jurors are wimps when it comes to imposing death. They like the current law because it tips the scales toward more death sentences and more executions. And why do prosecutors want more executions?
Well, they say death is warranted for the worst criminals and that it deters crime. Yet jurors would continue to have the option of imposing death even if a true life statute were passed. What prosecutors don't say is that more executions are good for their careers, that they embellish their tough-on-crime résumés and provide useful bragging rights when they run for reelection or higher office. For these prosecutors, current law provides the best of both worlds: confused juries are more likely to hand down death sentences, and the district attorney has the assurance that the defendant will never be released even if jurors reject death for a particular murderer.
