USA - Texas. Historic low number of death sentences in Texas in 2008

Historic low number of death sentences in Texas. Texas juries have sent 9 people to death row this year, the fewest in the state for 1 year since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume, according to a report today from Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, an anti-death penalty group. The annual review of capital case developments also called 2008 notable for executions that didn't occur, saying 6 lethal injections were stopped by last-minute reprieves because of questions about possible innocence, trial fairness or issues related to mental retardation or mental illness. At the same time, 18 condemned inmates went to the nation's busiest death chamber this year, down from 26 a year ago. No executions were carried out until June, however, because of a de facto nationwide moratorium on capital punishment while the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether lethal injection methods were unconstitutionally cruel. 2 other prisoners, whose death sentences were overturned, were returned to death row by juries at new trials. "2008 can only be characterized as yet another roller coaster year for the death penalty in Texas," said Kristin Houle, the coalition's executive director. "The state carried out a 'typical' number of executions in a record amount of time — averaging nearly 1 per week over a 5-month period. "Yet officials' zeal for executions was not matched by public desire for new death sentences, as evidenced by the continued steep decline in the number of new inmates arriving on death row." Juries in Harris County, long the state's top contributor to death row, have condemned no one in 2008, a first in more than three decades. Most notably, a man convicted of killing a police officer was given a life sentence rather than death. "A lot of it can be attributed to life without parole and people who plead," Roe Wilson, a Harris County prosecutor who handles capital case appeals, said today. Harris County accounts for 118 of the state's 354 condemned inmates. Dallas County is second with 40. According to the coalition report, Texas was one of nine states to carry out executions this year but the only one to do more than 4. 7 Texas inmates were removed from death row with sentences commuted to life. The final execution of the year in Texas took place Nov. 20. At least 10 prisoners have execution dates already scheduled for next year, including at least 6 in January.