Texas

Texas death row inmate Jose Garcia Briseño, whose case was used by the Texas courts to establish a very restrictive definition of mental retardation, has been resentenced to life without parole. His sentence was the result of a plea bargain ending years of litigation. Briseño has been on death row for over 20 years, and received a stay of execution in 2009 just 5 days before he was to be executed. Briseño's lawyers have argued he is intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but a Texas court said his crime required forethought, planning, and complex execution, so he was not mentally retarded. No other state uses such non-scientific factors in determining intellectual disability. Recently, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities criticized the use of these "Briseño factors" in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court: “[The Texas] impressionistic ‘test’ directs fact-finders to use ‘factors’ that are based on false stereotypes about mental retardation that effectively exclude all but the most severely incapacitated.” (Chester v. Thaler 2012). Staff from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had earlier intervened on Briseño's behalf because he had been so helpful to other inmates.

The Dallas Morning News used the recent repeal of the death penalty in Maryland as an occasion to advocate for death-penalty reform in Texas. The editors commented on the overall impropriety of capital punishment: “At best, the death penalty is selectively used state-supported retribution, which has no place in a civilized society.” The editorial supported six pending bills aimed at improving the fairness of the death penalty. One bill would bar the use of informant testimony in death penalty cases if the testimony was obtained from a witness or accomplice in exchange for favorable treatment. Another bill would create criteria based on scientific standards for courts deciding whether a defendant has an intellectual disability that would exclude him from execution. A third bill would introduce a Racial Justice Act into law to protect against bias in death sentencing. Read full editorial below.

A new animated film, The Last 40 Miles, will follow a death row inmate on his final journey from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the death chamber in Huntsville. The film uses three forms of animation to tell the inmate's story, from his tragic childhood to the moment he is being escorted to the lethal injection chamber. The script was written by freelance journalist Alex Hannaford and is based on interviews he conducted with death row inmates for news stories. Hannaford described why he used the metaphor of the trip to the death chamber: "It struck me a long time ago that this was the last thing these men see as they're escorted from death row in Livingston to the death chamber at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. One of the last things they see is that big Texas sun rising over a vast lake. It's quite breathtaking." A trailer for the short film can be viewed here.

Texas death-row inmate Andre Thomas has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and auditory hallucinations drove him to gouge out both of his eyes. Nevertheless, prosecutors still believe he should be executed. In a revealing recent essay in Mother Jones magazine, author Marc Bookman described in vivid detail Thomas's family history of mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence going back at least two generations.  A brief excerpt from the article epitomized Thomas's delusions:  "On July 14, 2008, Andre managed to procure something sharp and slash a seven-centimeter gash in his throat, requiring eight stitches. He insisted that he was the cause of all the problems in the world, and that if he killed himself all the problems would stop. The next day, he reported that he had been reading his Bible and got confused because he wasn't sure if it was the voices or his own thoughts that were telling him to kill himself. During a psychiatric assessment one week later, he explained that 'The government is conspiring to read my mind. That's why I ripped out my right eye. That's the righteous side. They can't hear my thoughts no more. I cut my throat. Gotta shed a little blood to save the world.'" In the three weeks before he killed his wife and two children, police were asked to apprehend him and bring him to a mental hospital on two separate occasions.  After Thomas removed his second eye, he was moved to a facility for mentally ill prisoners, but the state continues to pursue his execution.