USA TODAY International Edition
Texas case reignites execution debate
Nationwide support for the death penalty is on steady decline
A Texas mother’s planned execution this week drew months of pleas by lawmakers, celebrities and the public to halt it before a Texas appeals court on Monday did just that – issuing a stay to consider additional evidence.
That came just days after a Tennessee man in his 70s got a temporary reprieve from being executed and a South Carolina court stayed a controversial firing squad execution planned for later this week. Last Thursday, an ailing 78- year- old who spent 30 years on Texas’ death row was executed by lethal injection.
The four high- profile executions scheduled in just over a week have renewed attention on the U. S. death penalty. But experts say the cases stand in relief partly because executions have fallen to historic lows, and advocates say publicity over the cluster of cases could help accelerate declining public support for the death penalty.
“Each of these cases demonstrates, in its own ways, the problems that have compelled many people in the country and many states to turn away from the death penalty,” said Christopher Wright Durocher, vice president of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
The number of people put to death in the U. S has fallen from 98 in 1999 to 11 last year, reaching a nearly 50- year low following years of decline, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The percentage of Americans who support the death penalty for a person convicted of murder has also fallen, from 80% in 1994 to 54% last year, according to Gallup polls.
And, last year, Virginia became the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty.
“What has impacted the decline of the penalty are several things. One is the number of executions that were botched,” said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University. “Another is the increasing number of stories about exonerations. And then third is the fact that many states have recognized that the death penalty is extremely expensive.”
The dwindling use of capital punishment has helped the past week’s spate of cases prompt more national attention than would have occurred in years past, said Frank Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Last Thursday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a temporary reprieve to the execution of Oscar Franklin Smith, 72, one hour before it was scheduled to go forward due to an “oversight in preparation for lethal injection.” Smith is facing the death penalty for the 1989 triple slaying of his estranged wife and her teenage sons.
Also Thursday, Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, was put to death in Texas for the 1990 murder of Houston Police Officer James Irby.
Buntion’s attorneys described him as geriatric who posed no threat as he suffered from arthritis, vertigo and needed a wheelchair.
He also spent two decades in solitary confinement.
Irby’s widow, Maura Irby, said she had believed Buntion would die of old age on death row but hoped that with the execution, a painful chapter in their lives would be finally be shut.
“I pray to God that they get the closure for me killing their father and Ms. Irby’s husband,” Buntion said of Irby’s children in his last statement, KHOU- 11 reported.
A day earlier, South Carolina’s Supreme Court temporarily stayed the execution of Richard Bernard Moore who, on April 29, was set to face the state’s first firing squad execution for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk.
The case highlighted pharmaceutical companies’ unwillingness to provide lethal injection drugs, which had delayed executions. Instead, Moore had to choose between an electric chair and a three- person firing squad.
It would have been just the fourth firing squad execution since 1976. Moore’s attorney, who is challenging the constitutionally of the method, called both options “barbaric.”
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said if it’s eventually used, public revulsion could deter other states from adopting it and it would “certainly cause some more people to move away from the death penalty.”
Melissa Lucio, 53, was set to be executed April 27 in Texas for the murder of her 2- year- old daughter. But she had sought clemency amid new evidence and recent public support from state lawmakers and jurors who have reconsidered their verdict from her trial more than a decade ago.
She was sentenced to death in 2008 after the court found her daughter, Mariah, suffered physical abuse leading to her death. But Lucio and her attorneys say the toddler’s death was an accident and that she asserted her innocence more than 100 times during the interrogation alongside her confession.
Nearly half of the jurors who found her guilty have since called for her execution to be halted and for her to get a new trial.
Her lawyers say new evidence shows the child’s injuries were caused by a fall down a steep staircase.
Many lawmakers and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, an advocate for criminal justice reform, and Amanda Knox – an American whose murder conviction in the death of a British student in Italy was overturned – have rallied to Lucio’s cause. Her case was featured on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
“I am grateful the court has given me the chance to live and prove my innocence. Mariah is in my heart today and always,” Lucio said in a statement through her attorneys after the stay. “I am grateful to have more days to be a mother to my children and a grandmother to my grandchildren.”
If put to death, Lucio would be the first Latina ever executed by Texas and the first woman the state has put to death since 2014.
Questions surrounding the case had even led to public rallies in some cities across the country last weekend.
“That is exactly the kind of case that can change public opinion,” said Sandra Babcock, a Cornell University law professor who is one of Lucio’s attorneys.
Whether that happens isn’t yet clear. At least 10 executions are scheduled for the remainder of 2022, including three next month in Missouri, South Carolina and Arizona.
But amid struggles with execution methods and changing public support for it, the future of the death penalty “is more uncertain in 2022 than it has been in a very long time,” said Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor of law and political science.