‘Broken and deeply racist.’ Report criticizes Tarrant Co. in death penalty cases
A new report points to Tarrant County as an “extreme outlier” in its pursuit of death sentences in Texas, saying the county has a history of unfairly targeting racial and ethnic minorities in death penalty cases while also frequently overcharging defendants with possible death-sentence crimes to leverage plea bargains.
The report, “An Extreme Outlier: Race and the Death Penalty in Tarrant County, the Third Largest County in Texas,” was published by the Texas Defender Service, which describes itself as “dedicated to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in Texas through direct representation, policy reform, and public education.”
The report says 92% of the death sentences sought by Tarrant County prosecutors since 2012 have been against racial and ethnic minorities, even though 40% of Tarrant County’s population is white.
The county’s district attorney’s office also targets Black defendants for the death penalty in “upcharging” or charging harsh crimes beyond what the evidence supports in exchange for plea deals and using death-sentence eligible charges for aggravated burglary or robbery cases during an unplanned murder, the report says.
A death sentence is possible for someone charged with capital murder, but the District Attorney’s Office must choose to seek the death penalty. The county has failed to obtain capital murder convictions in most of its capital cases, and Black defendants were twice as likely as white defendants to receive no jail time or no conviction at all after being charged with capital murder, according to the report.
Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells said in a prepared statement provided to the Star-Telegram that his job is to “seek justice and give a voice to the victims of these horrific crimes and hold defendants accountable.”
“In making the decision to seek death, I consider the facts of the case, the defendant’s criminal history, the defendant’s likelihood to commit future crime, any known mitigation, and input from the victim’s family,” Sorrells said in the statement. “In making this determination I do not know the race of the defendant. The death penalty laws of this State, the process used in my office, and the resulting trial is not an arbitrary process based on demographics. Every case must be evaluated on its own facts under the law in light of our high burden.”
Estelle Hebron-Jones, director of special projects at Texas Defender Service, says if the district attorney’s office is wielding the death penalty onto racial and ethnic minorities there needs to be consideration about whether it is serving the public.
“I think the numbers don’t always translate into public safety,” said Hebron-Jones. “So if the goal is trying to just get as many people convicted as possible, we really have to question the practices there.”
Tarrant County has accounted for 23% of death penalty trials in Texas since 2020, even though it has 7% of the state’s population.
Black people make up 20% of Tarrant County’s population, but make up 69%, or nine of the 13, death penalty cases since 2012, according to the report.
The report says that out of 431 capital murder trials in Tarrant County over a 20-year period, 35% resulted in something other than a homicide conviction; 67% of the people charged with capital murder who ended up receiving no jail time were Black; and all seven people acquitted of capital murder by a jury were Black.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office disproportionately presses capital murder charges against Black people, but lacks the evidence to win at trial or obtain a capital indictment, which shows that the office’s approach is both “broken and deeply racist”, according to the report.
Local faith leaders plan to hold a new conference at noon May 7 at the Tarrant County Courthouse, 100 W. Weatherford St., Fort Worth, to express their concerns about the report.
