- “After decades as the nation’s death penalty pariah, Texas was not the lead executioner this year.” – Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
By Vanguard Staff
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas judges scheduled the fewest executions in at least three decades in 2025, but the state continues to spend millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing capital punishment amid persistent problems involving cost, geography, innocence claims, and racial disparities, according to a new report released by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
The report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2025: The Year in Review, finds that while death sentences and executions remain historically low, “glaring problems persist” in the administration of capital punishment in Texas .
“After decades as the nation’s death penalty pariah, Texas was not the lead executioner this year,” the report states. “Yet the State continues to waste millions of taxpayer dollars in the pursuit of capital punishment while glaring problems with its application persist.”
Of the seven executions scheduled in Texas in 2025, five were carried out. Two were halted after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted stays based on innocence claims. The court stayed the execution of David Wood, who has spent more than 32 years on death row, after he raised claims that the state presented false testimony and suppressed exculpatory evidence. The court also stayed the execution of Robert Roberson one week before his scheduled execution, sending the case back to the trial court to consider relief based on new scientific and medical evidence .
The report notes that Roberson faced execution “for a crime that never occurred—the tragic death of his two-year-old daughter,” adding that it was the second time in two years he came within days of execution despite evidence undermining the prosecution’s theory of the case .
Although Texas once dominated national execution totals, Florida carried out nearly four times as many executions as Texas in 2025. The report states that executions in Texas have “remained in the single digits all but one year for the last decade,” a sharp contrast to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the state routinely executed dozens of people annually .
The report finds that geography continues to be the strongest predictor of who receives a death sentence in Texas. “Whether a person receives a death sentence continues to be driven not by the underlying crime, but by geography,” the report states. In 2025, only prosecutors in Harris and Tarrant counties pursued new death sentences, out of Texas’s 254 counties .
Six of the last nine death sentences imposed in Texas originated in those two counties. In Harris County, juries sentenced two men to death in 2025. In one of those cases, involving Xavier Davis, the report cites reporting showing that Harris County spent approximately $1.8 million in taxpayer funds “just for Xavier Davis to defend himself from the death penalty,” not including prosecution or appellate costs .
In Tarrant County, prosecutors sought the death penalty twice, resulting in one death sentence and one sentence of life in prison without parole. The report notes that since 2021, Texas juries have rejected the death penalty in nearly one out of four capital murder cases that proceeded to trial with death as a sentencing option.
The report also highlights a growing number of cases in which prosecutors waived the death penalty due to its cost and the length of the legal process, often with the agreement of victims’ families. One of the most significant involved Patrick Crusius, who carried out a racially motivated mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 that killed 23 people. According to the report, the El Paso County district attorney dropped the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea after the case “dragged on for nearly six years and cost $6 million even without a trial on the state charges.”
In San Jacinto County, prosecutors dropped the death penalty against Francisco Oropeza after estimating the cost of a capital trial at between $1.2 million and $2 million. The report quotes San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon as saying, “The current estimate for trying this case ranges from $1.2 million to $2 million—four times our annual budget for indigent cases.”
Texas’s death row population continued to decline in 2025 for reasons other than executions. More men died in custody or had their sentences reduced than were executed. Collectively, those men spent 142 years on death row, according to the report .
Among them was Scott Panetti, who died in May after more than 30 years on death row. The report states that the state “relentlessly sought his execution despite his long-documented history of schizophrenia,” even after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in his case established a new standard for competency to be executed.
The report concludes that while Texas has long been viewed as the epicenter of capital punishment, current trends show that the death penalty is now “arbitrary and racially biased” where it is still used, and “continues to ensnare innocent and vulnerable people, all at a tremendous expense to taxpayers.”
“It is incumbent on policymakers at both the State and county level to examine the collective costs of capital punishment,” said Nan Tolson, director of Texas Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. “Texas should embrace a vision of justice that leaves the death penalty behind and reallocates limited public resources to measures proven to enhance public safety.”
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
