Racing Toward Scottsboro
Texas stuffs more people into more prisons than any other state. But why stop just because you’re ahead? Despite the admirable efforts of John Whitmire, chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, and Tony Fabelo, former head of the Criminal Justice Policy Council (who Gov. Perry fired for daring to report accurate information), to inject a smidgen of sanity into the debate, this legislature has approved $273 million for new prison construction, created new types of crime (stealing copper wire, for instance, and texting naughties to juvis), and expanded the reach of the death penalty. For the first time since the days of Jim Crow and lynching, sexual assault without homicide is returning to the books as a capital offense. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst championed the latter measure as part of a wider crusade against sex crimes, especially those involving juveniles. “Our message is this,” he puffed. “There’s tough. And then there’s Texas tough.” For a wrap-up on the Icky 80th, see the Texas Observer.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Nice to know we can always count on Texas legislators to uphold the state’s international reputation for capital punishment. Perhaps they’ll institute Texas’s own version of the Black Acts next session — hunting felonies committed by V.P.s exempted, of course.
August 25th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
So Texas, in its wisdom, has now reinstituted the death penalty for sexual assault without homicide? Seventy-five years ago Clarence Darrow had this say about the subject: “A man committing rape will get the same punishment under this law that he will get for murder, so he might as well go the whole way and remove the evidence.” That and the fact that some juries, even in Texas, will be less likely to convict in a sexual assault case when the punishment is so disproportionate to the crime, means that from now on, in the Lone Star State, there will be more rapists on the street–and more murderers, encouraged by the new law–not fewer. Good going.
August 25th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Apologies for the follow-up post, but I just read the Texas Observer story linked to this blog. Seems that new legislation in Texas also mandates the death penalty for repeat child sex offenders. Following Darrow’s reasoning (see above), the citizens of Texas can also now look forward to an increase in child homicide–and to “disappeared” children who in fact have been killed. If the penalty is the same for multiple-offense child sexual molestation as it is for murder, it only makes sense for a sexual predator to dispose of the evidence when he’s finished. Even if he’s eventually captured (less likely without a living victim to be interviewed and/or to testify…or a corpse to be examined for physical evidence) he will pay the same price for either crime. But, of course, the real purpose of such patently counterproductive legislation is not to prevent crime, but to gain re-election by pandering to the Yahoo vote. The hell with the kids.