The Texas Tribune describes a bill introduced in the Texas House (HB 2458) that would allow for appeals if race may have contributed to the sentence.
Under the bill, prosecutors would be able to argue that race played no part in a conviction, and a judge would decide whether to maintain the death sentence. The bill would require a the defendant who files such an appeal to waive their right to object to a sentence of life without parole.
Similar versions of the bill, which do not include such a waiver, have been filed by state Rep. Eric Johnson (HB 2614) and state Sen. Royce West (SB 1270), both Dallas Democrats. The proposals have already had an effect on death penalty cases even before they were considered by the Legislature.
Death row inmate Kimberly McCarthy — who is black and was convicted of murdering her 71-year-old white neighbor — was scheduled to be executed on April 3, but Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins asked a judge to temporarily delay the execution in case the Legislature approves a bill that could affect race-based appeals in death penalty cases.
Former Governor Mark White testfied before the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee that:
“We must make sure that racial discrimination does not poison our death penalty decision-making,” White wrote.
He pointed to a statistical study by Ray Paternoster, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland, who found that from 1992 to 1999, Harris County prosecutors sought the death penalty for African-Americans roughly three times as often as they did for whites with similar cases.
