Ronald Chapman: West Palm Beach Criminal Lawyer | Florida Criminal Attorney: DUI, Assault & Battery, Felonies | Criminal Law Firm

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Texas leads all other states in the total number of individuals that it has executed since 1976.  The breakdown is as follows:

1.  Texas:  405

2.  Virginia:  98

3.  Oklahoma:  86

4.  Missouri:  66

5.  Florida:  64

6.  North Carolina:  43

7.  Georgia:  40

8.  Alabama:  38

9.  South Carolina:  37

10.  Louisiana:  27

11.  Arkansas:  27

12.  Ohio:  26

13.  Arizona:  23

14.  Indiana:  19

15.  Delaware:  14

16.  California:  13

17.  Illinois:  12

18.  Nevada:  12

19.  Mississippi:  8

20.  Utah:  6

What is particularly troubling about the fact that Texas has executed more than four times the number of individuals executed by Virginia--the second state on the list--is that Texas currently accounts for fourteen percent of the estimated 216 DNA-based exonerations in the United States.  And Dallas County, with seventeen exonerations from genetic testing, tops every other local jurisdiction in the U.S. since 2001.

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Since the reimposition of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 1,029 people have been executed (as of March 2007). Over one-third of those have been executed in Texas (385 as of March 8, 2007). 

One has to wonder about this large number of executions in Texas in light of the fact that just one county in that entire state--Dallas County--has freed 15 wrongfully-convicted individuals since 2001 as a result of DNA testing.  (30 wrongfully-convicted people have been released statewide since 2001 due to DNA testing.)  In fact, just yesterday, a man who was convicted of rape in Dallas County 26 years ago was released from prison because of DNA testing. 

If you would like to read more about this case in particular and DNA testing in Texas in general, you can do so by reading a story that appeared yesterday in the Associated Press.

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Is Lethal Injection Unconstitutional?  The United States Supreme Court is set to decide this very important question.  The following article discusses the death penalty case that the High Court will rule upon in deciding whether lethal injection passes constitutional muster:

Public Defender Builds Injection Case

Published: 1/1/08, 12:45 PM EDT

By BRETT BARROUQUERE

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - One of the biggest capital punishment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a generation was put together largely by a young, fresh-out-of-law-school member of Kentucky's overworked and underpaid corps of public defenders.

David Barron, 29, filed an appeal on behalf of two Kentucky death row inmates, arguing that the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections across the country can cause excruciating pain, and thus amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

After three years of long hours on Barron's part, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 7.

"I can't believe I've got a case before the Supreme Court and I'm not even 30 years old," Barron said.

This is the first time in more than a century that the high court will address the legality of a method of execution. Thirty-six states use lethal injection, and executions across the U.S. have come to a halt in the meantime.

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A few years ago, the Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in that state because of his well-founded fear that wrongfully-convicted people might be executed.  Then, just last month, the American Bar Association issued a report in which it identified numerous problems with Ohio's existing death-penalty scheme.  No doubt many of those same problems exist in other states' death penalty systems as well.  And now, the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear oral arguments regarding the issue of whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.  (To learn more about this important case, go to the website for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.)

When will we as a nation realize that the death-penalty system that currently exists in 37 states and in the federal judicial system is fatally flawed and needs to be discarded once and for all?  Why not have a system of justice in which individuals who are convicted of first-degree murder are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison with no possibility of early release?  Wouldn't that system be far less expensive than the one we have now?  And wouldn't that system bring finality to cases much more quickly than the current system in which death-penalty appeals often go on for years?  Fortunately, the Innocence Project has uncovered many wrongful convictions thanks to DNA evidence.  But how many wrongful convictions will never be discovered because no DNA evidence exists in those cases?  Isn't it possible (if not likely) that some of those wrongfully-convicted individuals are currently located on death row awaiting their execution?  It's time that we abolish the death penalty in this country once and for all and establish instead a just system of punishment in capital cases.

Florida criminal lawyer  Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing crimes in Florida since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida criminal attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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