Death Penalty Process

Since the rebirth of the death penalty in 1976, there has been a total of 1,419 executions. Currently, there are 271 inmates on death row, just in Texas alone. Capital offenses are usually what land an inmate to get the death penalty. An inmate has to go through a lenghty trial, then once sentenced, gets isolated and waits to be executed. For a prisoner to be on death row, he or she has to have committed a crime that is considered a capital crime or a capital offense. For example, Texas lists criminal homicide as capital punishment, that is, “A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence causes the death of an individual”, and, “Criminal homicide is murder, capital murder, manslaughter, …show more content…
Prisoners get first transferred to prison where the death row takes place. In Texas, the Polunsky Unit will take care of the job. The first thing a prisoner will have to do is go through the process of appeals. First will be the automatic appeals, where the defendant will present his or her case to a panel of judges, who then will decide to convict and sentence the person, reverse the decision, or just reverse the death sentence. Next will be the State Posy-Conviction. In this stage, the defendant can say that his first attorney may have committed a mistake in his first trial, practically asking for a second chance. If this fails, the defendant has used all State help to review and change the decision, then moving on to the federal court, to the Federal Habeas Corpus. It is “a procedure under which a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration”. If this also fails, the prisoner can ask for Clemency. The governor has to pardon him or her, but of course, there’s not much of that in Texas. If all has been denied, the execution date is then set, and the prisoner is executed accordingly to the state execution method. He or she is allowed a visit from a family, a priest, and a last