According to an Associated Press article, the high court’s examination of Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures has caused a delay in carrying out executions in other states.
The Associated Press reported that because of that delay, October 2007 marked the first month since December 2004 that an inmate had not been put to death in the U.S.
Judges and other elected officials have chosen to halt or delay executions until the Supreme Court makes its ruling.
“We had an execution date on Denard Manns for January 2008,” Garza said.
However, Garza and two other state prosecutors have chosen to delay scheduled for now.
“It seems the common-sense thing to do at this point,” said Roe Wilson, who handles death penalty appeals for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston. Harris County sends more inmates to death row than any other county in Texas.
Wilson said she plans to ask a judge to withdraw the Feb. 26 execution date for a man convicted of killing a woman and her 2-year-old son. Rather than facing a court-imposed halt to the execution, withdrawing the date will make it easier to go ahead with Derrick Sonnier’s execution if the Supreme Court says lethal injections may resume, she said.
Garza echoed Wilson’s sentiments when he was asked by the Associated Press about his decision to ask a judge to cancel the Manns’ execution date of Jan. 24.
“It just seemed to me that the writing was very apparent,” Garza said. “Now we’ll let them rule and we can come back in and act accordingly.”
Garza said he’ll eventually ask a judge to reset Manns’ execution date.
Earlier this month, Nueces County prosecutor Carlos Valdez in Corpus Christi also decided not to seek any more execution dates until the matter was resolved.
In Texas, trial judges set dates for executions, typically at the request of local prosecutors. Twenty-six of the nation’s 42 executions this year have taken place in Texas. No other state has had more than three.
Garza said officials from the Texas Attorney General’s Office contacted him in September that the Supreme Court would be hearing the Kentucky case involving lethal injection, and that cases involving lethal injection would either be delayed or halted by the high court.
“For me at least, it makes no sense to go through the expense, the effort when at the end of the day, what’s going to happen is exactly what happened in Mississippi,” Garza said. “It sure makes sense not to put people through a lot of trial, tribulation and expectation, when you know and you have a good idea of exactly what is going to take place.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court halted an execution in Mississippi. The reprieve for Earl Wesley Berry, minutes before he was scheduled to die, was the third granted by the justices since they agreed in late September to hear the Kentucky case.
Kentucky’s method of lethal injection is similar to execution procedures in three dozen states. The court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners and the way they are administered have the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Arguments in the case will take place early next year and a decision should come by late June.
The Supreme Court’s order in the Berry case highlights what death penalty proponent Kent Scheidegger said are unreasonably long periods between the crime and punishment.
“It is a further delay in cases that are already much too long delayed,” said Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. Berry was convicted in 1988. His confession was used against him during the trial.
The decision brought an emotional response from about two dozen members of the victim’s family.
“Now you want to tell me that we got a fair shake today?” said Charles Bounds, whose 56-year-old wife, Mary, was kidnapped from a church and killed by Berry in 1987.
“Please don’t ever let that man out of prison, ’cause you’ll have me, then. ... I’ll kill him,” Bounds said.
Berry asked for a delay at least until the court issues its decision in the Kentucky case. He claimed the mixture of deadly chemicals Mississippi uses would cause unnecessary pain, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
Meanwhile, Garza said that despite the delay, Manns’ execution date will be reset.
“One way or another, we are going to reset it after the execution date,” Garza said.
Telegram staff writer Bryan Kirk and Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.
