Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Number of new death sentences dropping like stone
The Dallas News' Death Penalty blog published a fact-filled press release for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's 2010 Year in Review (pdf), including links to two interactive maps documenting new death sentences by county from 2007 to 2010 and from 1976 to 2010. This year, "Juries condemned eight new individuals to death in Texas in 2010, which is the lowest number of new death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas' revised death penalty statute in 1976. These new sentences occurred in six counties: Brazos; Dallas; Harris; Nueces; Rusk; and Travis." In FY 2010, according to the Office of Court Administration, just 3% of capital juries gave defendants a death sentence, down from 24% just a few years ago.
Now maybe the criminals will stop killing us. Fat chance.
ReplyDeleteActually, the number of murders has declined right in line with executions, so maybe they will.
ReplyDelete11:45, get a gun and stop thinking the justice system is there to protect you, it isn't.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say about the death penalty being used less frequently is, "Good, texas can't be trusted to wield that kind of power. ONE innocent man executed is too many, and there is compelling evidence that there have been far more than one."
What pro death penalty folks don't realize is, it's far easier than you people think to end up on the wrong end of a jury. Would you like to be judged by people like yourself? Hell no you wouldn't, you guys would hang a blind man for peeping.