At a hearing starting today in Houston, lawyers for a man charged with murder will argue that Texas' death penalty is unconstitutional because of the very real risk of executing an innocent person.
Death penalty activists around the country will have their eyes on Judge Kevin Fine's courtroom this week as he hears evidence on the risk of wrongful convictions and the details of John Edward Green Jr.'s alleged crime. This is the first time in Texas history that a trial court will examine the constitutionality of the death penalty, and the momentum behind Green's case represents a new legal strategy to stop executions in Texas and nationwide.
Green was charged with killing a woman during a 2008 robbery in Houston, but his attorneys say the evidence against him is questionable and that a trial would carry a substantial risk of sending an innocent man to death row. The Texas Defender Service, which leads Green's defense team, published last week a powerful list of the six leading reasons they believe the death penalty is unconsitutional. It includes the most common causes of wrongful convictions nationwide: unreliable eyewitness identification procedures, the risk of false confessions, lying jailhouse informants and minorities excluded from juries.
And among other attorneys and organizations expected to present evidence this week on the possibility that the state has executed innocent people -- and could do so again -- is the Innocence Project (where I work when I'm not blogging here). In recent years, the Innocence Project has presented convincing evidence that two men, Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones, were convicted based entirely on false evidence.
Even if Judge Fine were to rule the death penalty unconstitutional because it carries a heavy risk of executing the innocent, Green's case would face an uphill battle in Texas appellate courts, where questionable death sentences seem to survive even the strongest challenges. These hearings, however, are opening "a new forum for old wars," as Nathan Thornburgh writes today in Time magazine.
Meanwhile, an old forum for the fight to abolish the death penalty -- state legislatures -- could see action in several states this year. We've been closely following the fight to abolish executions in Illinois, where a steady stream of wrongful convictions have played an important role in exposing the injustice of death sentences. Activists in that state say they came within a couple of votes of abolition as lawmakers closed their session for the year, and will have one more chance at a vote in January. Sign on to a letter to Illinois lawmakers here, urging them to come to grips with the state's grim history of death row exonerations and end executions for good.
And here at Change.org, we'll be watching several other states -- including Connecticut, Maryland and Montana -- with a shot at death penalty abolition as legislative sessions open up next month. Stay active and stay tuned.
Image Credit: thekirbster
Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley
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