FORT WORTH, Texas — A report by the Texas Defender Service found that Tarrant County is a stark outlier in Texas for its aggressive pursuit of death sentences, particularly against racial and ethnic minorities.
The report shows that “Tarrant County has accounted for 23 percent of death penalty trials in Texas since 2020,” despite having only 7 percent of the state’s population.
Conspicuously, 92 percent of the death sentences sought by Tarrant County prosecutors since 2012 have been against racial and ethnic minorities, even though 40 percent of Tarrant County’s population is white.
The report also found that 67 percent of the people charged with capital murder who ended up receiving no jail time were Black.
It further noted that “eight of the nine people whom a grand jury failed to even indict for capital murder despite the initial charges were Black, and one was Latino.”
The report also highlights that, out of 431 capital murder cases, more than one in three did not end in a homicide conviction.
Additionally, it added, “Another 10 percent of defendants got no jail time, either because they were sentenced to probation, the DA’s Office dropped the charges, the grand jury rejected the DA’s request to indict, or they were acquitted at trial.”
Co-Executive Director of the Texas Defender Service Burke Butler said, “The days of racial terror lynchings may be over, but racism continues to infect the Tarrant County DA’s Office, influencing who it decides should face the death penalty.”
Butler continued, “Racism has no place in our criminal-legal system … most of all when it comes to a matter of life or death.”
The report found that the “Tarrant County DA’s office systematically presses capital murder charges against Black people and then lacks the evidence to win at trial or even get past the incredibly low hurdle of a capital indictment.”
In the meantime, all of the defendants languish in the Tarrant County jail, at a time when Tarrant County faces intense scrutiny for more than 70 jail deaths since 2017.
Director of Special Projects at Texas Defender Service Estelle Hebron-Jones emphasized, “Tarrant County wields an outsized influence on the Texas death penalty landscape.”
She added that this is not because of its size, but because of its extraordinary willingness to pursue capital charges. “We call on Tarrant County to confront these findings and fundamentally rethink its practices,” said Hebron-Jones.
Local and national reactions to the report include the following.
An organizer with United Fort Worth, Pamela Young, said, “These are horrible tactics that are not making us safer.”
Young continued, “The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office needs to be proactive about eliminating racial bias that upends Black and brown people’s lives, often unnecessarily.”
Young concluded that “Tarrant County needs a public defender’s office to help protect its most vulnerable people from these racist outcomes.”
Executive Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty Laura Proter said, “At a time when most jurisdictions around the country, including in Texas, have turned away from the death penalty, Tarrant County prosecutors are extreme outliers in both pursuing death and their near total focus on minorities.”
She reported that “The findings of this report should shock the conscience of every Texan and people everywhere.”
Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Chris Kemmitt emphasized, “Our nation’s criminal justice laws must be administered fairly, without regard to a person’s race or ethnicity.”
Kemmitt continued that “Tarrant County has a duty to take steps to reform its system and eliminate these disturbing practices that undermine the principles of justice, fairness, and equality that must guide our system.”
The report concludes, “It is time for the Tarrant County DA’s office to stop harming communities of color by ending its racist practices and focusing on policies that promote public safety for everyone.”
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