? For the last several decades, people who have fought to end capital punishment in Texas have been like the Flat Earth Society or those people who think the moon landings were faked on a sound stage in Arizona--a bunch of Don Quixotes fighting for a cause which nobody thought had any chance at success.
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? But when the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty holds its 13th annual 'March to Abolish the Death Penalty' today, they will face something new.? The wind is at their backs, as high profile cases involving people falsely imprisoned for murder have begun to convince Texans that the state's capital punishment law is flawed.
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? Anti death penalty activist Scott Cobb says the group is calling on the Legislature, when it meets in January, to appoint a commission to look at the entire range of sentencing options available to Texas juries, including death by lethal injection.
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? "A study commission which has been done in other states, to look at the entire system comprehensively, to look at what can we do to pass reforms to improve the system and reform the system," he said.
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? Leading the march today will be four Texans who have recently been released from prison after serving long prison sentences, some of them on Death Row, for crimes that advanced DNA testing has now proven? that they did not commit.
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? Cobb says one problem with the system is that DNA testing is not available to all inmates.
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? "DNA only exists in about 10% of cases," he said.? "A lot of people on death row have no evidence that they can test, so there is no way that they can take that route to prove their innocence."
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? One of those marching today will be Michael Morton, who in many ways may become the symbol of problems with the Texas death penalty.? A middle class supermarket manager in Georgetown with no criminal record, Morton was convicted in the murder of his wife in 1986, and served an amazing 25 years in prison before being released earlier this year.
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? The fact that so many average Texans can identify with Morton, who was the victim of overzealous prosecutors and misinterpreted evidence, may convince many people that the death penalty is hopelessly flawed, not to mention too expensive and unfairly administered.
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? The death penalty is actually dying in Texas.? Since juries were given the option of life in prison with no possibility of parole, the number of people sentenced to death has fallen sharply, officials say.
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? Voters in California will decide on Tuesday whether to abolish the death penalty in that state.? There are actually more offenders on Death Row in California than in Texas.
Source: http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=119078&article=10547028
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