Why the pace of executions has plummeted in Texas

After a generation of running the busiest execution chamber in the Free World, Texas is losing its enthusiasm for the death penalty.

At least, it would appear, Texas juries are.

During 2023, only three capital murderers in the state were condemned to death row, and two of them represented themselves in court, according to a year-end report showing that even though Texas still remains No. 1 when it comes to application of the death penalty, executions in Huntsville continue their nearly decade-long slow pace.

This year, the number of executions in Texas topped out at eight. That's up some from last year's five but a far cry from the 40 inmates who in 2000 were strapped down with large leather belts on a gurney and received a lethal dose of poisons that in most cases quietly ended their lives.

Even though the report by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — which, as its name not so subtly suggests, is one of the nation's loudest voices against the imposition of the harshest penalty legally available to government — illustrates the diminished use of capital punishment, it is hardly celebratory.

Five of the eight inmates put to death in Texas were people of color, as were two of three killers newly condemned. And six of them, according to the report, "had significant intellectual or mental health impairments, including intellectual disability."

But the report also shows that the death penalty is no longer the partisan wedge issue it once was in Texas. The Texas House, which continues to have a comfortable Republican majority, passed nearly a dozen bills that would add new guardrails to further ensure due process in capital cases with bipartisan support. None of them cleared the Senate, however.

And a new organization called Texas Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty launched in September. Note that the word "concerned" is a considerable step short of "against," but the organization does argue that executions do not deter criminal violence and that the cost to the state of litigating death sentence appeals is a burden on local taxpayers. Finally, the organization uses the same "sanctity of life" argument that often appears in conjunction with opposing abortion.

The pace of executions in Texas began tumbling around 2005 from the dozens a year starting in the mid-1990s. By 2009, the pace had dropped into single digits. In between, lawmakers enacted a statute that allowed juries to consider life without the possibility of parole.

Before that, an argument prosecutors would make when they sought the death penalty was that a "life" sentence in Texas was often a 40-year sentence because a convict would be eligible for parole after four decades of confinement.

When the push for life without parole starting gaining traction, hard-line district attorneys warned that murderers otherwise bound for the lethal injection gurney would be spared, presumably by soft-hearted jurors.

Those prosecutors were proved correct about the "spared" part. The "soft-hearted" part is probably more nuanced. By the mid-2000s, groups such as the Innocence Project were uncovering evidence that some executed inmates were probably not guilty of the offense that sealed their fate. Evidence also surfaced that inmates awaiting their death date were not guilty, and they were freed from death row.

In Texas, 31 condemned inmates were taken off death row because of sentence reductions or overturned convictions. That's actually higher than the number of inmates executed since that time, 28.

Texas' drop-off in executions mirrors the national trend. In 2000, when Texas hit its high-water mark, 85 inmates were executed nationwide. Last year, the national total was 18. And because Texas is very much part of that nationwide, it means that its status as the far-and-away execution leader in the United States remains unchallenged.

Since 1982, when Texas resumed the application of the death penalty, 586 inmates have been executed by lethal injection. In second place is Oklahoma with 123. In 2002, Texas had 450 inmates on death row. Now the number is 180.

That's still a high number, but not high enough to keep the state's execution chamber as busy as it once was.