Maybe it’s time to mess with Texas

Imagine I were to tell you about a criminal justice system in a Third World country in which a murder defendant, who is black, was accused of a killing a white teenager. Imagine that the defendant was convicted by an all-white jury after a one-day trial in which prosecutors had no fingerprints, no witnesses, no blood, no DNA, and no motive. The black defendant had never been convicted of a crime in his life. There was even evidence that proved police and prosecutors wrongfully “coached” witnesses on what to say during the brief trial, but the evidence was suppressed by the government in this country.

Then imagine I were to add that in this Third World country, the day after the one-day trial, the jury sentenced the defendant to death, an execution that is scheduled to take place tomorrow.

What if I were to mention that this Third World country was Texas?

Regretfully, this scenario isn’t imaginary at all. It’s exactly what’s happened in Texas to Delma Banks Jr., who will be executed by lethal injection tomorrow unless the Supreme Court intervenes.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the controversy surrounding this pending execution has garnered attention from former FBI director William S. Sessions, two retired federal appeals court judges and a top former federal prosecutor who have stepped in to try and prevent Banks’ execution. It will almost certainly be too late.

The article also notes that Texas “executes nearly as many convicts as all the other states combined and has come under repeated attack as error-prone and dismissive of systemic mishaps.”

Prosecutors have some circumstantial evidence implicating Banks in the crime. But the funny thing about the death penalty is you can’t undo it. New evidence that becomes available in the future, or witnesses who recant their stories, can’t be reintroduced once the state has killed the defendant.

No matter what you think of capitol punishment, situations like this should at least make you hesitate.

Supporters of the death penalty seem unwilling to ask for a moratorium to explore systemic faults more closely before more Americans are killed by the state. Opponents seem so afraid of being labeled “soft on crime” that even the most progressive of public officials steer clear of condemning criminal justice tragedies.

I applaud the public officials who have the courage to stand up and say what it painfully obvious — the system isn’t working and the consequence of this failure could mean innocent people getting killed by their own government. I just wish these public officials weren’t such a small minority.