Texas at Risk of Losing 'Killer' Status

The Houston Press has a darkly humorous piece on the decline of executions in Texas over the past few years. Apparently we're running the risk that the unofficial motto 'Everything's bigger in Texas' may no longer apply to the death penalty. We're actually on the verge of losing to, gulp, California...

The article is appropriately sardonic and filled with passages like this:

There are still some head-in-the-sand optimists like Dudley Sharp, the former head of Houston’s Justice For All and now a freelance death-penalty advocate and expert.

To be sure, Sharp admits, “there’s definitely a more organized anti-death-penalty movement these days.” He allows that some fellow advocates see the Supreme Court’s ruling barring juveniles from being tried for capital murder as “a major change, a parting of the seas, where you have the majority of the court relying on or calling to European opinion” (with “European opinion” being pronounced as if it were “Michael Moore”).

[...]

He blames the media for highlighting so many stories of death row prisoners being exonerated, saying many of those cases are just being sent back to the courts. No more than “30 or 40 are innocent,” he says, “and I think that’s probably a high figure.”

(In case you’re wondering, 30 or 40 innocent people put to death would come under the category of You Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking Some Eggs. “No one,” Sharp says, “wants to see an innocent person sentenced…but if you’re going to have no death sentences because there may be some innocent people sentenced, would there be any sentences at all for any crimes?”)

Don't miss the author's suggestions on how we can maintain our status as the most screwed up criminal justice system in the country.