Texas has improved its criminal justice system following dozens of exonerations in recent years, but a new study the American Bar Association will release Wednesday finds that the death penalty system here still falls far short when it comes to fairness and eliminating the risk of executing the innocent.
“In many areas, Texas appears out of step with better practices implemented in other capital jurisdictions, fails to rely upon scientifically reliable methods and processes in the administration of the death penalty and provides the public with inadequate information to understand and evaluate capital punishment in the state,” the report says.
The report, which outlines a host of recommendations to improve the criminal justice system, is part of the bar association’s national project examining the implementation of the death penalty in states. While it praises Texas for recent improvements intended to increase fairness, the report says much work remains. The organization says its recommendations would restore public confidence in the system and help to ensure that Texans aren't wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Those include requiring the indefinite preservation of biological evidence in violent crimes, abandoning the evaluation of "future dangerousness," banning the execution of those with mental retardation and mental illness and establishing an innocence commission to examine the lessons of wrongful convictions.
“Texas has made some good policy decisions over the last couple of years,” said Royal Ferguson, the founding dean of the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law and a former U.S. district judge who served on the association’s Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Team. “There are a lot more that need to be made.”
Prosecutors contacted for this story declined to comment because they had not yet seen the embargoed report.
Source: The Texas Tribune, September 18, 2013
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