Capital Punishment in Texas

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, has been used to punish people in Texas since 1819. Overall, 1,153 people have been executed via a variety of methods including hanging, firing squad, electrocution, and lethal injection. Texas has never used the gas chamber as a method.

The majority of executions in Texas have been carried out as a punishment for murder but other crimes over the years have been subject to the death penalty as well. These include piracy, cattle rustling, treason, desertion, and rape. Currently, capital murder is the only charge for which a person can receive the death penalty. This requires committing a capital offense.

A capital offense, which is then classified as a capital felony, is a murder in which an individual intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual under special circumstances. These special circumstances are:

1. Murder of a public safety officer, firefighter, or correctional employee

2. Murder during the commission of kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated rape, and arson

3. Murder for remuneration

4. Murder of multiple people

5. Murder during a prison escape of a correctional officer

6. Murder by a state prison inmate serving a life sentence for any of 5 crimes

7. Murder of an individual under 6 years of age

Since the 2005 decision in Roper v Simmons, a grey area has existed concerning capital punishment. In Texas, an individual is considered an adult at 17 and is eligible for the death penalty at 17. However, Roper v Simmons decided that sentencing an individual less than 18 years of age to the death penalty violated the 8th amendment's information concerning cruel and unusual punishment that deals with the evolving standards of decency. This has created a large grey area of what to do with individuals that are less than 18 but have committed a capital offense in Texas.

Following the Roper v Simmons case, the sentences of the juveniles on death row in Texas were commuted to life sentences.

In October of 2007, the Supreme Court halted executions in the United States in order to examine evidence that the lethal injection method of executing individuals was actually more painful than originally thought. Until the situation is decided, no executions will take place. The last person to die in Texas was Michael Richard on September 25, 2007.