Today the eyes of the world are on Texas. The European Union has made an appeal to Gov. Rick Perry, and Reuters has devoted a lengthy feature to explaining our peculiar ways for those who reside in far off nations.
A grim milestone will be reached tonight when the state executes its 400th convict since its resumption of the death penalty in 1982. To many, it is justice manifest, where the state is an arbiter of life and death with the ability to rectify the wrongs of the past.
To others it is a hallmark of ignominy, a clear distinction that Texas has not yet reached the level of civilization found in other Western nations that have long since abandoned the practice many consider barbaric.
Texas, along with 37 other states, bears nearly unfathomable responsibility with its power to choose who lives and who dies. The margin for error is nonexistent.
In 1998 it took a jury less than an hour to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Johnny Ray Conner, a Louisiana native, was responsible for murdering a Houston-area convenience store employee. Conner, 32, will end his journey from juvenile delinquency to death row following a series of injections.
There is a looming specter, however, that extends far beyond the Walls Unit in Huntsville. Every execution is accompanied by an alarming prospect – the possibility, however remote, that the executed is not guilty of the crime they were convicted of.
It is for this reason that Texas should immediately instate a death penalty moratorium.
In 1993, Ruben Cantu was executed for a San Antonio murder. According to a 2005 Houston Chronicle investigation and a subsequent report by Human Rights Watch, Cantu was likely innocent of the charges levied against him.
There is no justification for the propagation of a system that has the potential to kill the innocent in the name of justice. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois made a prudent decision in 2000 when he opted to impose a moratorium on his state’s death penalty following the commuting of 13 death penalty sentences in Illinois between 1977 and 2000.
Exonerations from death row are not a concept foreign to the complex world of capital punishment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit public policy institute, between 2000 and 2007 there were an average of five death row exonerations a year nationwide.
Texas has been responsible for eight of the 124 exonerations that have occurred since the reinstatement of the death penalty. Behind every exoneration are trials plagued with hearsay, pseudoscience, eyewitness contradictions and false confessions. The justice system, even with its innumerable checks and balances, is still susceptible to human error.
Responsibility and judicial integrity are as important to justice as restitution is to a victim’s family. The state has a moral obligation to ensure the utmost accuracy in its actions and to eliminate even the remotest possibility of a wrongful execution.
With our current abilities, though, accuracy of this level is simply impossible.
An act as irreversible as the death penalty necessitates a burden of proof greater than can be reasonably encountered in a court of law. The possibility of executing the innocent far outweighs any alleged justice the practice may reap.
We may never know how many, if any, of the 400 inmates executed by the state have been innocent, but even one would be far too much. It is a burden the state should never shoulder.
