Texas
Fewer Texans sentenced to death, executed amid “evolving standards of decency”
:focal(0x0:3000x2000)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/5cefaa61ded534ac5bff3d0a24773412/1017%20Roberson%20Huntsville%20MF%2006.jpg?ssl=1 "Fewer Texans sentenced to death, executed amid “evolving standards of decency”")
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In 1982, Texas was the first in the world to execute an inmate by lethal injection, its first execution since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Quickly, the state became the United States’ top executioner and is among the top three in imposing death sentences.
At the turn of the century in 2000, the population on Texas’ death row reached a record high of 459 inmates and officials carried out 40 executions, the most in a single year. Decades later, the state’s interest in capital punishment appears to have cooled, according to available data, influenced by cultural shifts, legal updates and what some experts have called “evolving standards of decency.”
In 2022, the death row population dropped to under 200 inmates for the first time in almost three decades, and by the start of 2025, there were 174 people on Texas’ death row. Still, Texas has executed more people than the next four states combined since 1982, a trend largely upheld by a few urban counties — the top three of which are responsible for more than 40% of the state’s executions.
“The death penalty is no longer an American story, it’s really a local story,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “It’s about which local jurisdictions are using it, and those decisions that are being made by their local elected officials.”
Five men were executed by Texas in 2024, the sixth year in a row in which there were less than 10 executions. A little more than half of those sentenced to death in Texas — almost 600 of more than 1,100 inmates — have been executed since 1977. Since 2020, almost as many people on death row in the state have had their sentences reduced or convictions overturned as those executed, with 24 executions and 22 sentence reductions, most due to intellectual disability. Nine men also have died on death row before their execution date since 2020.
The slowdown in death sentences isn’t something that can be attributed to one thing but rather a buildup of legal and social factors, said Kristin Houlé Cuellar, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a grassroots advocacy group whose focus is on death penalty education and abolition.
One of the most significant reasons for the decline was the state adopted life sentences without parole as an option to capital punishment in 2005. Texas was the last state with the death penalty to do so, according to the coalition’s 2024 report.
“That has given prosecutors and juries more discretion in terms of how they handle capital cases,” Houlé Cuellar said. “So what we’ve seen is that in the vast majority — and by vast majority, I would say 99-point-something-percent of capital cases — prosecutors in Texas are not pursuing the death penalty as a sentencing option.”
The financial costs of a death sentence to counties is also a factor prosecutors, specifically in rural counties, must consider when seeking the death penalty.
After the capital murder trials of three men who dragged James Byrd Jr., a Black man, for 3 miles and left his body outside an African American church in 1998, Jasper County was forced to raise its property taxes by more than 8% because of the cost to the county — $1.1 million of its $10 million budget. Two of the three men, who were self-admitted white supremacists, were executed, one in 2011 and the other in 2019, and the case led to new state and federal hate crime laws. The third man is serving a life sentence.
The moment a district attorney chooses to seek the death penalty on a capital murder charge, the cost increases as those trials often require a more expensive jury selection process, expert witnesses from out of state and a separate trial to determine if execution is warranted. Those costs are incurred by the counties, but long periods of incarceration on death row and yearslong appeals processes are costs the state pays.
“All of this adds up to a very expensive system, and that meter starts running the minute the district attorney decides that [they’re] going to seek the death penalty,” Houlé Cuellar said.
Other significant developments adding to the decline of death penalty convictions occurred in 2017 and 2019 when U.S. Supreme Court rulings originating from Harris County mandated that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals update its standards on disqualifying death sentences based on intellectual disability. Executions of those with intellectual disabilities are considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and 18 people have been removed from death row since 2017 based on evidence of intellectual disability.
Despite the decades-long decrease, 2024 had the highest number of new sentences in five years, with six people receiving the death penalty, three alone out of Tarrant County — its first since 2019. Houlé Cuellar said all three trials falling in 2024 is somewhat unintentional because the charges were brought across a three-year period, but the fact the death penalty was pursued at all speaks to a mindset some prosecutors have.
“I think the fact that all three trials happen this year is somewhat random, but the decision to seek the death penalty was very deliberate and reflects a very … aggressive use of the death penalty out of a county that really seems to be going in the opposite direction from the rest of the state,” Houlé Cuellar said.
Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells said in a statement to the Texas Tribune that choosing to levy the death penalty against anyone is “never an easy decision,” but clarified the juries in all three cases in 2024 agreed with the sentencing.
“We don’t often ask for the death penalty,” Sorrells said in the statement. “But in 2024, we asked juries three times to convict capital murderers and give them the death penalty. Three times they agreed.”
Dallas and Harris counties lead in the number of death sentences handed down, but Tarrant County’s three cases in 2024 placed it ahead of Bexar County for third highest in the state. The four counties together represent more than half of all executions in the state, as Harris remained the top county in the U.S. for executions with 135 since 1977, two of which were in 2024.
Public opinion on the death penalty has also split between older and younger Americans. National support for the sentence has dwindled to its lowest since 1972, having dropped more than 10% since 2000, according to an October Gallup poll. And while 53% of U.S. adults overall were in favor of the death penalty in 2024, less than half of Gen Z and Millennial adults supported the sentence.
“As the death penalty has been used less in terms of new death sentences and executions have become fewer, the death penalty is really fading from the minds of many voters to the point that some may conclude it’s simply not necessary,” Maher said.
Ten executions are currently scheduled nationally for 2025, four of which are in Texas. Those four scheduled do not include Robert Roberson, whose execution has not yet been rescheduled after it was temporarily blocked by the Texas Supreme Court in October. Roberson’s case has received national attention because of the contention around his innocence and a bipartisan effort within a Texas House of Representatives committee to halt his execution.
Steven Lawayne Nelson, who was convicted of suffocating a pastor with a plastic bag and assaulting a woman during a church robbery in Arlington, is scheduled to be Texas’ first execution in 2025 on Feb. 5.
DALLAS — Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, a U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday in a victory for conservatives who have long sought to incorporate more religion into classrooms.
The 9-8 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a boost to backers of similar laws in Arkansas and Louisiana. Opponents have argued that hanging the Ten Commandments in classrooms proselytizes to students and amounts to religious indoctrination by the government.
In a lengthy majority opinion, the conservative-leaning appeals court in New Orleans rejected those arguments in Texas, saying the requirement does not step on the rights of parents or students.
“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the ruling says.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that challenged the Texas law on behalf of parents said in a statement that they anticipate appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights,” they said in the statement.
The mandate is one of several fronts in Texas that opponents have fought over religion in classrooms. In 2024, the state approved optional Bible-infused curriculum for elementary schools, and a proposal set for a vote in June would add Bible stories to required reading lists in Texas classrooms.
The decision over the Ten Commandments law reverses a lower federal court ruling that had blocked about a dozen Texas school districts — including some of the state’s largest — from putting up the posters. The Texas law signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott took effect in September, marking the largest attempt in the nation to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools.
From the start, the law was met almost immediately by a mix of embrace and hesitation in Texas classrooms that educate the state’s 5.5 million public school students.
The mandate animated school board meetings, spun up guidance about what to say when students ask questions, and led to boxes of donated posters being dropped on the doorsteps of campuses statewide. Although the law only requires schools to hang the posters if donated, one suburban Dallas school district spent nearly $1,800 to print roughly 5,000 posters.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called the ruling “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.”
“The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day,” he said.
Tuesday’s ruling comes after the appeals court heard arguments in January in the Texas case and a similar case in Louisiana. In February, the court cleared the way for Louisiana to enforce its law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the Texas ruling “adopted our entire legal defense” of the law in her state. In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey also signed a similar law earlier this month.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional, and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us,” Murrill said in a statement posted to social media.
Judge Stephen A. Higginson, in a dissenting opinion joined by four others on the court, wrote that the framers of the Constitution “intended disestablishment of religion, above all to prevent large religious sects from using political power to impose their religion on others.”
“Yet Texas, like Louisiana, seeks to do just that, legislating that specific, politically chosen scripture be installed in every public-school classroom,” Higginson wrote.
The law says schools must put donated posters “in a conspicuous place” and requires the writing to be a size and typeface that is visible from anywhere in a classroom to a person with “average vision.” The displays must also be 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall.
Texas’ law easily passed the GOP-controlled Legislature and Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have backed posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
___
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this report from Honolulu, Hawaii.
Texas
Glam influencer who drowned during Texas Ironman had battled flu but ignored pleas to ditch race
The glam influencer who drowned during a Texas Ironman swim had been battling the flu – but ignored pals who begged her to pull out of the brutal endurance race, according to one friend.
“She was ill before the trip, she wasn’t okay,” Luis Taveira said of close friend Mara Flávia, 38, who died during Saturday’s race in The Woodlands.
“My wife and I spoke with her to say she was too weak for this race, although a couple of days ago when we talked to her, she insisted she was okay,” Taveira said of the Brazil-born influencer, according to sports website the Spun.
“I still cannot believe what’s happened. She was ill because of the flu.”
Flávia continued “training hard” even while “weakened” by her illness, the friend said.
Just two days before the competition, Flávia shared a picture of herself in a pink swimming costume and cap sitting by the edge of a pool.
“Just another day at work,” she wrote in Portuguese.
Her Instagram account was peppered with snaps, showing her working out in a gym, by the pool, or running outdoors.
“Not every victory is photogenic, not every growth is pretty to watch. Sometimes evolving is being silent, stepping back, saying no, crying in the background, and coming back the next day more aware,” she said in one motivational post.
In others, she said that skill “only develops with hours and hours of work” and sport is “the best tool for transformation.”
The Ironman Texas competition features three legs — a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. The women’s event got underway just after 6:30 a.m. Saturday, with fire crews alerted around an hour later that there was a lost swimmer.
Flávia’s body was found around 9 a.m. in about 10 feet of water.
Officials have ruled her preliminary cause of death was drowning, and relatives have paid tribute.
Flávia’s sister, Melissa Araújo, said her sibling “lived life intensely” – and revealed a piece of her had vanished, People reported.
“You were always synonymous with determination, with courage — with a strength that seemed too vast to be contained within you,” she wrote on social media.
“You never did anything halfway; perhaps that is why you left such a profound mark on the lives of everyone who crossed your path.
“A piece of me is gone, and I will have to learn to live without it. And it hurts in a way I cannot even explain.
“It is a strange silence, a void I knew existed all along — as if the world itself had lost a little of its color.”
Flávia’s partner, Rodrigo Ferrari, described the swimmer as his “love” and said not waking up next to her was hard.
“Ursa, you were the best person I have ever met in my life,” he wrote in a note shared on social media.
A Brazilian fitness influencer has died after getting into difficulty during the swimming portion of an ironman event in Texas.
Mara Flavia Souza Araujo was reported as a “lost swimmer” around 7.30am at the Ironman Texas in Lake Woodlands near Houston on Saturday. According to KPRC 2 News, safety crews could not immediately locate Araujo. The 38-year-old’s body was discovered around 90 minutes later in 10ft of water by divers. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department confirmed her identity in a statement to NBC on Monday.
“MCSO can confirm that Mara Flavia Souza Araujo, 38, of Brazil died while competing in the Ironman event in The Woodlands on Saturday,” the sheriff’s department told NBC News. “Preliminary investigations indicate she drowned during the swimming portion of the event.”
Araujo was an experienced triathlete and had completed at least nine ironman events since 2018. She had more than 60,000 followers on Instagram and had posted about the importance of making the most out of life in the days before her death.
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“Enjoy this ride on the bullet train that is life,” she wrote in Portuguese. “And even with the speed of the machine blurring the landscape, look out the window – for at any moment, the train will drop you off at the eternal station.”
Organizers of the race expressed their condolences on Saturday.
“We send our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the athlete and will offer them our support as they go through this very difficult time,” race organizers said in a statement on Saturday. “Our gratitude goes out to the first responders for their assistance.”
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