History of the Death Penalty in Texas

1923-1964: The Electric Chair Prior to 1923, counties carried out their own executions, by means of hanging. In 1923, the state of Texas ordered all executions to be carried out by the state, in Huntsville, by means of the electric chair. The state executed its first inmate by electrocution on 8 February 1924. Five prisoners were electrocuted on that date. Death row and the execution chamber were located in the Huntsville unit from 1928 to 1965. The last electrocution was carried out on 30 July 1964. Texas electrocuted a total of 361 inmates from 1924 to 1964. 1964-1982: Moratorium In 1964, judicial challenges to capital punishment resulted in a de facto moratorium on executions in the United States. On 29 June 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that every state death penalty law in the U.S. was unconstitutional because the death penalty was being unfairly and arbitrarily assigned. At that time, there were 52 men in Texas with death sentences. Governor Preston Smith commuted all of their sentences to life, and death row was clear by March 1973. In 1973, Texas passed a new statue to standardize the way the death penalty was assessed. Juries quickly began imposing death sentences under the new statute, and death row began filling up again in 1974. In 1977, Texas adopted lethal injection as its means of execution, adopting a three-drug protocol developed by medical examiner Jay Chapman and anesthesiologist Stanley Deutsch for the state of Oklahoma. The first lethal injection was given on 7 December 1982. 1982-1991: Lethal Injection Begins During the moratorium years, death row was moved from the downtown Huntsville unit to the brand-new Ellis unit, which opened in July 1965. The execution chamber remained at the Huntsville unit. When Texas resumed executions in 1982, prisoners were transported from the Ellis unit, 12 miles north of town, to be executed. Although executions resumed in 1982, they were rare at first. One execution was carried out in 1982, and none in 1983. For the next eight years, executions were carried out at the average rate of five per year. Thus, in the first ten years of capital punishment in Texas, there were 43 executions. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Penry v. Lynaugh that juries had to be allowed to hear and consider mitigating evidence, such as a defendant's history of mental retardation and child abuse, when imposing death sentences. Some prisoners' death sentences were vacated as a result of this decision. The Texas legislature modified the sentencing instructions given to juries in 1991, resulting in the three-question format that is in use to this day. 1992-1999: Pace of Executions Increases In 1992, the number of executions jumped dramatically. Over the next four years, 62 prisoners were executed, an average of fifteen per year. In 1995, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring certain death-row appeals to be filed concurrently. The intent of this law was to reduce the amount of time prisoners spent on death row waiting for their legal appeals to be pursued. The short-term effect of this new law was that executions virtually stopped while it was being appealed. From March 1996 to January 1997, there was only one execution in the state. However, after the law withstood legal challenge, executions resumed at double their old pace. Over the next three years, there were 92 executions. On Thanksgiving Day, 1998, seven death-row prisoners attempted to escape from the Ellis unit. Six were captured on prison grounds, but one prisoner, Martin Gurule, successfully made it outside. However, Gurule was mortally wounded in the attempt, and on 3 December he was found dead in the Trinity river, not far from Huntsville. Because of this incident, Texas began moving the men on death row from the Ellis unit to the Terrell unit. The Terrell unit, opened in 1993, was considered more secure than the Ellis unit. It is located just outside the town of Livingston, about 45 minutes from Huntsville. By law, prisoners are still transported to Huntsville to be executed. The Terrell unit was renamed the Polunsky unit in 2001. 2000-2005: National Scrutiny In 2000, several factors caused the death penalty to come under scrutiny unprecedented since the late 1960's to early 1970's. In additon to the long-standing charges that the death penalty is cruel, unfair to minorities, and a barbaric, inhumane instrument unfit for a civilized society, opponents of capital punishment began pressing their belief that innocent people were being executed in the United States. In January 2000, after several well-publicized exonerations of death row inmates in Illinois, Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state until a study could be undertaken to evaluate the practice of capital punishment. Texas came under especially strong national scrutiny in 2000 for two reasons: one is because it led the nation in executions -- more than all other 37 death-penalty states combined. The other reason is because Texas Governor George W. Bush was running for President, and by March, he had effectively won the Republican Party nomination. One of the main weapons death-penalty opponents weilded in the attack on capital punishment was the availability of DNA testing. DNA testing methods were much more sophisticated in 2000 than when most death-row inmates at that time were convicted, so the argument was that DNA evidence should be retested in cases where the defendant's guilt was in doubt. On 1 June, Gov. Bush issued a 30-day stay of execution to convicted murderer Ricky McGinn, for DNA testing. McGinn was convicted of raping and murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter in 1993. McGinn was executed in September after the tests came back positive. The legislature passed a law in 2001 guaranteeing DNA testing to any condemned prisoner whose innocence might be secured as a result. The other principal issue of the early 2000's was whether prisoners who are mentally retarded should be executed. Several states passed laws banning the execution of the mentally retarded. The Texas legislature passed such a law in 2001, but Governor Rick Perry vetoed it, noting that Texas law already protected the mentally incompetent from execution, and that juries should be allowed to decide whether a convicted killer deserves the death penalty. On 20 June 2002, however, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Atkins v. Virginia that a "national consensus" had developed that executing mentally retarded prisoners is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore the Court ruled it unconstitutional. The Court left it to the states to determine how mental retardation would be determined. Between 2000 and 2005, the average number of executions per year in Texas declined from the high 30's to the low 20's. The reaons for this decline could be debated, and may have little to do with the above changes in death penalty law. As of this writing, no Texas death row prisoner has been exonerated by DNA evidence, and the number of prisoners who have had their sentences overturned on the basis of mental retardation has been small. One feasable explanation for the rather marked drop in the pace of executions after 2000 is that laws and court decisions in the 1990's that were designed to reduce a building backlog of death penalty cases accomplished just that, and after that backlog was cleared, the number of executions per year resumed at a more moderate pace. The Supreme Court further restricted the application of the death penalty in 2005, when it ruled that prisoners who commited their capital offenses when they were under age 18 could not be executed. Following this ruling, 29 prisoners who were 17 at the time of their offenses were removed from death row. 2005 to date: Decline in Death Row Population In 2005, Texas changed the law so that capital murderers sentenced to life in prison instead of given the death penalty would be ineligible for parole. Advocates of this law hoped that jurors would be more likely to sentence an offender to life, knowing that he could not be paroled in the future, and that the number of death sentences imposed would be reduced. So far, this appears to be the case. Prior to 2005, jurors were typically sending 30 or prisoners per year to death row, but since then, the highest number of death sentences imposed in a year has been 15. In every year since 2005, the number of prisoners removed from death row by execution, natural death, or resentencing has been larger than the number of new death sentences imposed. Therefore, the population of death row has dropped from 446 prisoners at the beginning of 2005 to 316 prisoners at the beginning of 2011. The number of prisoners currently on death row is the lowest it has been since 1990. In 2011, Texas and other states using lethal injection changed the chemical makeup of the lethal injection, due to a worldwide shortage of one of the drugs that had been used since 1982. Also in 2011, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice stopped providing special last meals to condemned inmates. This long-standing policy was changed at the request of state senator John Whitmire after inmate Lawrence Brewer declined to take a bite of the lavish feast he had ordered. Condemned inmates are now given a last meal from the same menu available to the rest of the prison unit. 6/26/2013 Kimberly McCarthy Murder and robbery of a woman in her home. 6/12/2013 Elroy Chester Murder of a man and rape of two girls during a home burglary. 5/15/2013 Jeffrey D. Williams Murder of a police officer who was attempting to arrest him for auto theft. 5/7/2013 Carroll Parr Murder of a man during an armed robbery. 4/25/2013 Richard Cobb Murder of a man in the course of robbery, abduction, and rape. 4/16/2013 Ronnie Threadgill Carjacking murder of a 17-year-old. 4/9/2013 Rickey Lewis Murder of a man and rape and robbery of a woman in their home. 2/21/2013 Carl Blue Murder of his ex-girlfriend in her apartment. Year-By-Year Death Row Statistics Table 1 shows the year-by-year population of death row from 1974 to the present. In the table, "Died" includes all death row prisoners who died by any cause other than execution. This includes deaths by natural causes, accidents, suicide, murder, and death during attempted escape. The "Removed" column counts those prisoners who were removed from death row, including overturned convictions, reduced sentences, commutations, pardons, and transfers to federal custody. Table 1 - Year-By-Year Death Row Population Jan. 1 Population Executed Died Removed Added 1974 0 0 1 0 9 1975 8 0 0 0 22 1976 30 0 0 0 24 1977 54 0 0 2 20 1978 72 0 0 5 44 1979 111 0 1 6 22 1980 126 0 0 10 28 1981 144 0 1 14 25 1982 154 1 0 19 29 1983 163 0 2 14 25 1984 172 3 0 4 23 1985 188 6 0 3 37 1986 216 10 2 4 43 1987 243 6 1 11 37 1988 262 3 0 3 35 1989 291 4 0 5 29 1990 311 4 1 4 29 1991 331 5 0 5 30 1992 351 12 1 6 32 1993 364 17 2 14 37 1994 368 14 0 6 47 1995 395 19 1 5 43 1996 413 3 0 3 39 1997 446 37 2 4 35 1998 438 20 3 4 42 1999 453 35 2 5 48 2000 459 40 2 2 30 2001 445 17 2 2 31 2002 455 33 3 4 36 2003 451 24 0 2 29 2004 454 23 3 7 25 2005 446 19 1 31 15 2006 410 24 3 3 11 2007 391 26 0 8 15 2008 372 18 2 8 9 2009 353 24 0 9 11 2010 331 17 3 5 9 2011 315 13 1 8 8 2012 301 15 2 2 7 2013 289 Total 492 42 243 1070 Figure 1 shows the year-by-year Texas death row population in line graph format. Again, population totals refer to 1 January of the given year.