Judge Kevin Fine may have to watch his back these days. The Texas Judge had the audacity to hold a historic hearing this week on whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based upon the “disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions.” Death penalty folks in Texas are madder than a mule chewing on bumblebees!
For the first time in the Lone Star State’s history, its death penalty system is being challenged by a district court (it’s been under moral scrutiny for years). The Democratic judge whose bench sits in Republican territory held court in a county which boasts the highest number of death penalty convictions in the country. Texas has consistently led the U.S. in executions.
Judge Fine’s hearing was a part of John Edward Green’s case. Green has not yet been convicted of a 2008 robbery and fatal shooting, although prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Green’s attorneys filed a pre-trial motion that claims there’s an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people in the state.
Experts from around the country, including from the Innocence Project, converged on Harris County. They proved the lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, shed light on junk science paraded in court as forensic evidence, and pointed out incompetent lawyers, false confessions and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.
There will be no shortage of proof that Texas courts don’t give a hoot about justice. For starters, there are the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham.
Willingham was convicted based upon fake forensic evidence of arson and murder that he killed his three young daughters. A foreign hair sample at the scene of the crime got poor Claude Jones wrongly executed.
Forensic science refuted the original evidence in the Willingham case, but the state is programmed for executions, no matter what the truth is. The evidence in the Jones case has since been debunked.
Of course, you don’t have to go to Texas to find the above courtroom scenarios. Right here in Missouri, we have the cases of Ellen Reasonover, Clarence Dexter Jr., Joe Amerine, Josh Keezer, Darryl Burton and Dennis Fritz. Some have been exonerated in non-murder cases such as Steve Toney, Johnnie Briscoe and Larry Johnson.
A few like Reggie Clemons and Dale Helmig await new opportunities to free themselves of murder charges and the specter of the death penalty.
Far too many are still languishing in prison because they are unable to capture media attention or garner the resources necessary to reverse their legal injustices. Prosecutorial misconduct, tortured confessions, racist juries and poor legal representation are common factors in most wrongful convictions, whether they are capital murder cases or not.
The number of executions in the U.S. is in decline, but there is still work to be done. Even if Judge Fine rules the death penalty unconsitutional, it will only apply to the Green case. But it is another nail in the coffin of a brutal and arbitrary form of punishment for which there is no reversal in the case of wrongful state murders.
Voices like that of retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional, add to the growing chorus against execution. Illinois is on the heels of repealing its death penalty law. Death penalty opponents in Missouri want to follow suit, making the upcoming legislative session even more interesting.