A Texas state lawmaker has introduced legislation to abolish the death penalty in the state, amid a high-profile death row case currently unfolding.
Democratic state Rep. John Bucy III filed the bill for the upcoming legislative session.
“I think I’ve been opposed to the death penalty my whole life because I’ve thought about its use and the need for it to exist in our society,” Bucy said, according to Fox 7.
“Financially, if you just want to look at it from an economic point of view, we spend more money to execute than to keep someone in prison. So it’s really a lose-lose situation with something at stake. high risk if we get it wrong,” he continued.
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The photo shows the gurney in the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, file)
This comes after the Texas Supreme Court last week allowed the state to set a new execution date for inmate Robert Roberson, whose original execution was delayed last month.
Roberson is currently on death row because of his conviction in which prosecutors say he killed his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, by shaking her to death, known as shaken baby syndrome. But his lawyers say Nikki actually died from other health problems such as pneumonia and that new evidence proves his innocence. His lawyers also said doctors failed to rule out these other medical explanations for the child’s symptoms.
Roberson was scheduled to be executed on October 17 before the state Supreme Court ordered a stay to delay his execution until shortly before the scheduled date.
If put to death, he would be the first person in the United States to be executed in a case based on shaken baby syndrome.
More than 80 Texas state legislators, plus the detective who aided the prosecution, medical experts, parental rights groups, human rights groups, best-selling novelist John Grisham and other advocates have called on the state to grant clemency to Roberson on the belief that he is innocent. A group of state legislators also visited Roberson in prison to encourage him.
“I feel like I became more involved in this Robert Roberson case and I wanted to make sure that we continued this conversation about the lack of humanity related to the death penalty,” Bucy said.
Texas lawmakers meet with Robert Roberson at a prison in Livingston, Texas, on September 27, 2024. (Criminal Justice Reform Caucus via AP)
Texas has executed nearly 600 people since 1982, according to Kristin Houle Cuellar, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty.
“That’s way more than any other state in the country,” Houle Cuellar told Fox 7. “We have quite a reputation for using the death penalty in Texas.”
Houle Cuellar said there have been fewer death sentences in the state over the past decade, which she attributes in part to the 2005 introduction of life without parole.
“Prosecutors used this discretion in choosing not to seek the death penalty,” Houle Cuellar said. “Even in about 30 percent of the cases where they went to trial and asked for the death penalty, the juries rejected it.”
Houle Cuellar said Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Bexar counties lead the state in death sentences and more than half of all Texas counties have never issued a death sentence.
Since 2007, several Texas lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to abolish the death penalty. But Bucy says there is now enough momentum around the issue to reintroduce legislation to eliminate the practice.
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The execution bed lies empty on death row on April 25, 1997, on Texas Death Row in Huntsville, Texas. (Getty Images)
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“Even though it is an uphill battle to end the death penalty in Texas, we have seen the number of executions decrease,” he said. “I think the sentiment is changing, and I also think that as we see these specific cases come to life and we start to learn the specific stories, people are going to be more and more concerned about the possibility of being wrong. “
Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and Rep. Joe Moody, both Democrats, have filed similar bills to abolish the death penalty, which will face votes from fellow lawmakers when the legislative session begins early next year.
In another Texas death row case, a judge ruled last month that Melissa Lucio was innocent in the 2007 death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. Senior State District Judge Arturo Nelson recommended that Lucio’s conviction and death sentence be overturned. The judge also found that prosecutors suppressed evidence and testimony, including statements from Lucio’s other children, that could support the claim that she was not violent and that Mariah’s death was accidental following a fall down the stairs.
