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Death Blow?

© Gina D. Gipson

The unimaginable has transpired in the Lone Star State - Texas jurors will soon have the option of sentencing a capital defendant to life without the possibility of parole - catapulting it into this century, with many other states.

Who'd have thunk? Not me. Of course, it remains to be seen how this sentencing option will affect the state's lust for the fatal needle, particularly in Houston, the capitol of capitals. But even there, the peek of a new day may be dawning in the bright lights of crime lab incompetence.

The newborn law doesn't go into effect until September, so there's still a little time for jurors to order a killing or two, but this is unquestionably a momentous development in Texas jurisprudence, on a miracle-like scale. Right now, a jury's choice is a disparate one: life, with a parole hearing in forty years, or death.

One reason asserted for adding the law to Texas' arsenal is that juries can be secure in knowing that a defendant sentenced to actual life, will never again hit the streets to commit more murder and mayhem. Good. Thing is, that was also true five, ten years ago. So why is Texas just now so willing to move into the newest century?

I've already mentioned probable suspicion of evidence processed through the Houston crime lab - at least one defendant has been released from prison because of faulty analysis. But a deeper look is warranted, I think.

During the last Supreme Court term, and the current one, Texas courts and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, have faced a deluge of reprimands from the top, for a stubborn, arrogant even, refusal to comply with constitutional protections in death penalty cases.

Most recently, the High Court slapped the Fifth Circuit for refusing to address a Dallas County capital case, in which Dallas prosecutors systematically struck blacks from the panel, merely because they were black. There's a procedure for determining whether or not the Constitution's prohibition against excluding potential jurors from serving, based solely on race, has been violated. And in this particular case, the prosecutors claimed that these African-Americans were struck because of their views on the death penalty.

Problem was, several others on the panel, nonblacks, expressed the same views. I call it a sham. The Supremes called it a constitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause, sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit, with a query, perhaps. You guys deaf, dumb or recalcitrant (this was the second time this case had gone up, and been sent back with a mandate to comply with the Court's ruling)? I'm voting for the latter.