Death penalty can't fall short of standards

Those people and institutions opposed to the death penalty — this newspaper, for one — might ordinarily be encouraged by the year-end report on executions in Texas.

After all, the number of people put to death by the state is the lowest in 18 years. Ten people died in Huntsville’s death chamber last year, one-fourth the annual record of 40 executions, set in 2000. For a change, Texas in 2014 was not the nation’s far-and-away death penalty leader, having tied with Missouri for the top spot.

A closer look at some of the people who did and didn’t draw their last breath in the death chamber reveals something less than celebratory.

Capital punishment is supported by a strong majority of Texans, beyond 70 percent in opinion surveys, with majority support among all ethnic groups. We can’t pretend to know the minds of supporters, but it’s probably a safe bet that many believe capital punishment is a deterrent — a notion not supported by research.

Supporters may also hope that the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst — mature, calculating, conspiratorial adult monsters.

But they’re far from the only people condemned to die in the name of all Texans.

Last year’s 10 executions included two men who were 18 when they killed. The savagery in both cases is undeniable, deplorable, unspeakable. So is the fact that both executed men were barely out of their adolescence when they committed senseless acts.

Were they a danger to society? Yes. Was lethal punishment the only way to protect the public from them? No. That’s why the state created the sentence of life without parole in 2005.

Last year’s number of executions would have been higher except for the willingness of appeals courts to step in where mental limitations or impairments were in question.

Less well-known is the case of Robert James Campbell, a dull-witted laborer sentenced to death in the rape-murder of Houston bank teller Alexandra Rendon in 1991. Campbell was 18 at the time. An accomplice got 35 years for the crime.

Depending on who did the testing, Campbell’s intellect has been pegged both above and below the 70 IQ cutoff that the Supreme Court has set in protecting the mentally retarded from execution. Either way, four members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals faulted the state prisons system for gamesmanship in keeping helpful test results from Campbell’s lawyers.

Is Campbell the worst of the worst? Should the state be in the business of applying lethal justice to respond to low-functioning 18-year-olds? Is this the kind of capital punishment that 70 percent-plus of Texans say they support?

We think the answers are no, no and no.

— The Dallas Morning News