U.S. Methods of Execution

• lethal injection
• electrocution
• lethal gas
• hanging
• firing squad

Capital Murder Crimes in Texas

• Murder of a public safety officer or firefighter
• Murder during the commission of kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson, obstruction or retaliation
• Murder for remuneration
• Murder during prison escape
• Murder of a correctional employee
• Murder by a state prison inmate, who is serving a life sentence of any of five offenses (murder, capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault or aggravated robbery)
• Multiple murders
• Murder of an individual under six years of age

Types of Lethal Injections

• Sodium Thiopental (lethal dose which sedates person)
• Pancuronium Bromide (muscle relaxant which collapses diaphragm and lungs)
• Potassium Chloride (stops heart beat)

No Middle Road
Huntsville student interviews inmates, examines pros, cons of death penalty

By Jaime Walker
Skiff Staff

For Ashlye Hylton, Huntsville isn’t just the town where the state executes a death-row inmate every two weeks — it’s the town where she goes to school.

When she decided to leave her home in California to get a journalism degree from Huntsville’s Sam Houston State University, she knew she was in for a culture shock. She didn’t know how much the move would change her life.

“This is a bizarre little town,” she said. “There are things I like about living here, but I will never get over the fact that the prison employs most of the people in town.

“And each time there is an execution, everybody walks around like nothing is going on. It’s easier to pretend than it is to take a hard look at what we do here.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, officials at the Huntsville Unit prison have executed about one-third of the 700 inmates put on death row nationwide, 244 men and two women.

When the state executed David Lee Goff, a 32-year-old Fort Worth man convicted of the 1990 kidnapping, robbery and slaying of drug counselor Michael McGuire, Hylton couldn’t help but question, yet again, whether she supports the town’s work.

“Every time Texas puts another man to death here, I remember the men I met in the prison,” she said. “I wonder if we know what we are doing or if we have the right to do it at all.”

Legislation for humanity

For years, the Texas Legislature has been notorious for its harsh stance on criminal punishment. But this session has been one of prison reform.

Legislators, hoping to fix what some are calling “a broken criminal-justice system,” authored bill after bill designed to change the way justice is carried out in the state.

Legislation which would allow the state’s voters to decide whether executions should be halted for two years while death-row policies can be re-examined has made it out of committee in both the House and the Senate.

It is expected to go to the floor soon.

Early in the session, Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill giving convicted inmates the right to petition the court for state-paid DNA testing because the technology wasn’t available at the time of their trials.

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, who coauthored the bill, told reporters on that day the legislation would give the Texas criminal justice system more integrity and make it more efficient. Officials with Duncan’s office said Texas is the 12th state to enact such legislation.

According to the Texas Department for Criminal Justice nearly a dozen men have been released from Texas prisons in the past three years after DNA evidence cleared them of rape or murder charges.

The Senate has approved legislation setting minimum standards for court-appointed lawyers, marking the first time state funds could be used to help pay the lawyers. They also passed bills to stop racial profiling and to provide more compensation for those inmates found wrongfully convicted.

The House passed a bill Monday banning the execution of mentally retarded inmates.

Perry has asked both chambers to consider offering juries the option of sentencing capital murder defendants to life without parole. Bills to do just that have passed committee in both the House and the Senate.

The letter of the law

Alan Levy, head of the criminal division for Tarrant County’s District Attorney’s office, has spent his career persecuting people who break the law. Although he supports DNA testing measures and the review of specific cases, he thinks the idea of a moratorium is ridiculous.

“I can’t tell you what a dramatic impact a measure like that would have on the system,” he said. “People that support it can’t give you any direct evidence why it will fix the system because they can’t even tell you how it is broken.”

Levy said people who support a moratorium lack the courage to say they are opposed to the death penalty.

“If you ask me, the battle to halt executions is a propaganda battle,” he said.

Hylton said she either supported the death penalty or was middle-of-the-road until she started researching the facts.

Communicating with the dead

Hylton, now a senior, had the opportunity to examine the Huntsville’s “Walls” Unit firsthand when she was assigned to interview a death row inmate. The Houstonian, Sam Houston’s university newspaper, did a special section on capital punishment for an issue last fall. Hylton and other classmates were enlisted to contact inmates and their families.

She spoke with inmates Stacey Lawton and Jeffery Dillingham just weeks before each was executed.

“I had done my research on Jeffery Dillingham’s case, but he originally denied my request for an interview,” she said. “Then I went with another reporter to talk to Stacey Lawton, and he told me he was friends with Jeffery and would see if he might be willing to talk to me.

“When I resubmitted my request, Jeffery agreed, but was nervous because in his seven years on death row he never talked to the media. He said since it was for school and since Stacey thought I was sincere, he wanted to talk. I did my interview on the prison’s media day and talked to his family, too.”

Hylton said she continued to correspond with both Dillingham and Lawton after the issue was published.

“Writing those stories was the hardest thing I have ever had to do,” she said. “I would get off the phone with their mothers, their aunts and I would be in tears. Things change when you realize they are human beings and not the animals society wants you to believe they are.”

Research says

Levy said examining the death penalty should be a case-by-case process.

“How can you say that a man who maliciously kidnapped, raped and murdered a young girl and then confessed to his crime should get to spend the rest of his life in jail on the taxpayer’s dollar?” he said. “That is not justice.”

Carol Thompson, chairwoman of the sociology and criminal justice department, said society tends to base its idea of justice on retribution.

“We live in a world where people believe that an eye for an eye is the right way to deal with violence,” she said.

“If you buy into that idea, the death penalty is perfect.”

Levy said there should be no middle of the road.

“Either you think people should die for heinous crimes or you don’t,” he said. “End of story.”

One reason people oppose the measure is that no research has shown capital punishment as a deterrent for crime.

“If we want to teach our children not to kill, then we need to send that message in all circumstances,” Thompson said.

Learning the lesson

Hylton said she appreciated the value of human life after her visit to the “Walls” Unit.

“No other experience teaches you about people the way that assignment did,” she said.

“I learned men can change in prison, life is hard no matter what and the death penalty is a bad idea because whether it’s in place or not, it’s human beings who are getting hurt.”

Jaime Walker
j.l.walker@student.tcu.edu