The nation’s busiest death chamber in Huntsville, Texas almost resumed the execution of convicted killers yesterday.
About 90 minutes before he was to be put to death, Derrick Sonnier was granted a reprieve because other cases challenging the state’s lethal injection procedures are still pending. The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals decided not to go ahead with the execution when those cases have not been decided.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully support capital punishment for heinous crimes; some offenders just cannot be rehabilitated and we need to get them out of society permanently. We must be sure that we only execute the guilty because we cannot reverse it. Seventeen or more wrongly-convicted defendants in Dallas County have been freed after the Innocence Project proved their DNA did not match the evidence. I fear it is only a matter of time until we discover that an innocent person has been executed – and that will be the end of the death penalty.
Texas recently passed a law providing for the penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole for what are now capital offenses. Opponents said having this option available might make juries less likely to consider capital punishment. I have to disagree. The Texas legislature only meets for several months every two years, so we must not wait until the death penalty is gone to put another option for dealing with the incorrigible criminal in place. It is important to have life without the possibility of parole on the books so that ex post facto considerations will not make the commutation of death sentences result in too many cases of immediate parole if capital punishment is abolished.
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