Houston's Death Penalty Hullabaloo

Harris County Texas is the death penalty capital of the democratic world. It accounts for about 1 percent of the U.S. population but has carried out nearly 10 percent of the country's executions since 1976. So when a state district judge in Houston, Kevin Fine (pictured), unexpectedly ruled Texas's capital punishment procedures unconstitutional last week, it was a shot heard 'round the world.

Attorneys for the defendant in the case, John Edward Green Jr., who is charged with killing a woman in a robbery and shooting her sister, praised the decision as "the beginning of the end of the death penalty in Texas." But proponents of the death penalty, who carry larger bullhorns, were indignant. Greg Abbott, the state's attorney general, called the ruling "legally baseless," while Governor Rick Perry, who has presided over 211 executions during his long tenure, denounced the "activist judge [for] legislating from the bench."

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Source: The Huffington Post, March 11, 2010 - Photo: In this Nov. 14, 2008 photo, newly elected State District Judge Kevin Fine, shows his sleeve of tattoos at his downtown office in Houston, Texas. Fine used his life experience of beating drug addiction for his campaign. Fine, who is a judge in the Texas county that sends more inmates to death row than any other in the U.S. is facing a torrent of high-profile criticism after he declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Houston Chronicle, Nick de la Torre / AP Photo