 |
| Search |
|
|
Non-Profit Partners
University of Houston
KPFT 90.1-FM
WTP-TV, Cable Channel 17
|
|
human / civil rights
If you are convicted of a crime in Texas or sent to death row, chances are it happened to you in Harris County.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reports that more than half of those currently on death row were sentenced in Harris County.
Harris County prosecutors won a conviction in more than half of their total felony cases in 2001 according to the United States Department of Justice.
“The idea is that you’re presumed innocent when you’re brought in,” David Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said. “The reality is that I think people react in a different way.”
Atwood said that the politics in Harris County are conservative and that elected officials such as judges are sometimes former district attorneys. He claims that this creates a system in favor of the prosecution.
“Many people at least have a basic trust in what the district attorney is doing,“ Atwood said. “I don’t have quite as much trust now after learning about the system.”
Money is not an issue for the Harris County DA’s office, Atwood said. Its total budget for 2001 was over $34.7 million according to the USDJ.
Marie Munier, head of the trial bureau for the Harris County DA’s office, said that the county’s higher budget allows them to train better prosecutors.
“Harris County is a large metropolitan area and compared to the other jurisdictions in the state we have a large office,” Munier said. “And when you have a large office a lot of times I think you have resources that other people don’t have.”
Munier said that a good prosecutor is skilled at jury selection and that the prosecutors at the Harris County office are all experienced; she has been with the DA’s office for 27 years.
She attributed these factors, among others, as the cause of Harris County’s high conviction rate.
“I think the level of expertise we have is high maybe compared to other jurisdictions,” Munier said.
She said that the juries in Harris County are fair-minded.
“We have a huge population and a tremendously diverse population,” Munier said. “And our jury pools are not a bunch of rednecks.”
She characterized jurors in Harris County as “less liberal” than jurors you may get in Austin, but maintains that it is still possible to get a fair jury in Harris County.
Atwood said that defendants with adequate funds for defense attorneys will make prosecutors think twice about accepting a case.
“If he knows that the defendant has a lot of financial resources to, in essence, hire the ‘dream team’ and get the very best experts to come in it’s going to make it much more difficult,” Atwood said.
There is not a public defender system in Harris County; courts instead appoint local attorneys that volunteer to take such cases to defendant that can not afford their own legal counsel.
Munier said that there are new state regulations for court-appointed attorneys and that she believes the quality of the defense bar has gone up recently.
“They get good legal defense when they get court-appointed attorneys,” Munier said. “It’s not like they’re getting the dregs of the defense bar.”
She did admit that defendants with more money are more likely to hire a better defense including investigators, experts and more attorneys.
What she did not see is how the county could afford to improve the situation for defendants that require court-appointed attorneys.
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do to change that,” Munier said. “The county can not afford, in every case, to pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for added investigation and experts and that sort of thing. It’s not always needed in every case you know.”
Atwood said that crime rates are not affected by high conviction rates or the threat of the death penalty; they are a result of the economic factors and the quality of the community policing.
“The reality is that people who commit a crime – even murder – are not thinking about consequences normally,” Atwood said. “They don’t think they’ll get caught.”
Munier said that the high conviction rate does deter crime and believes that the crime rate would rise without the threat of being caught and punished.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
Top of Page
|
|
|
Facts and Stats
Statistics on the prosecutor’s offices in Harris County plus rates on cases closed and convictions on felonies and misdemeanors. This information is from the US Bureau of Justice. This one probably needs some tweaking to put into context. There’s an option to compare it to other counties in Texas but Harris County is much larger so it might prevent a warped view unless the data is simplified.
FBI’s uniform crime report, which tracks arrests, not convictions
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Homepage
A good breakdown of some statistics for Death Row in Texas. Harris County surpasses everyone else by far.
News Review
Houston Chronicle's entire HPD Crime Lab scandal coverage
2001 Chronicle article about death row and sentencing in Harris County
2001 Texas Observer Article covering a wrongful conviction that was overlooked until President Bush was elected. Austin, not Harris County, but still Texas.
2003 In These Times article about a death row inmate’s conviction being overturned because of a conspiracy to keep black people off of the inmate’s jury [the inmate himself is black]. Dallas, not Harris County, but still Texas.
|
