Judge Kevin Fine may have to watch his back these days. The Texas Judge had the audacity to hold a historic hearing last week on whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based upon the “disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions." Death penalty folks in Texas are madder than a mule chewing on bumblebees!

For the first time in the Lone Star State state’s history, their death penalty system is being challenged by a district court (it’s been under moral scrutiny for years). The Democratic judge whose bench sits in Republican territory held court in a county which boasts the highest number of death penalty convictions in the country. Texas has consistently led the entire US in executions since the re-instatement of the death penalty in 1976.

District Attorney Pat Lykos ordered her posse in the appellate division (represented by Alan Curry) to stand down during the hearing. National experts on eyewitness identification, confessions and forensic evidence were itching to testify at the unusual hearing.

Before it could get too embarrassing, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stepped in and stopped the proceedings. This was in response to the state’s motion that Judge Fine was overstepping his boundaries on the already settled issue of the death penalty. Now both sides have 15 days to say why the hearing should go forward. The state’s highest criminal court will then take up the matter and make a ruling.

Judge Fine’s hearing was a part of John Edward Green’s case who has not yet been convicted of a 2008 robbery and fatal shooting although prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Green’s attorneys filed a pre-trial motion that claims there’s an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people in the state. Experts from around the country, including from the Innocence Project, were scheduled to converge on Harris County to prove the lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification and to shed light on junk science paraded in court as forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers, false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.

There will be no shortage of proof that Texas courts don’t give a hoot about justice. For starters, there are the cases of  Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was convicted based upon fake forensic evidence of arson and murder that he killed his three young daughters. A foreign hair sample at the scene of the crime got poor Claude Jones wrongly executed. Forensic science refuted the original evidence in the Willingham case but the state is programmed for executions, no matter what the truth is. The evidence in the Jones’ case was since been debunked. These revelations won’t bring these men back from the dead.

You don’t have to go to Texas to find the above courtroom scenarios.  Most states who have been zealous about the death penalty are equally guilty of prosecutorial misconduct, tortured confessions, racist juries and poor legal representation. These are common factors in most wrongful convictions whether they are capital murder cases or not.

In my home state of Missouri, we have the cases of Ellen Reasonover, Clarence Dexter, Jr., Joe Amerine, Josh Keezer, Darryl Burton and Dennis Fritz. Some have been exonerated in non-murder caes such as Steve Toney, Lonnie Erby, Anthony Woods, Johnnie Briscoe and Larry Johnson. Poor Anthony Woods was exonerated after DNA proved him innocent after he had already served his time of 18 years. A few like Reggie Clemons and Dale Helmig await new opportunities to free themselves of murder charges and the specter of the death penalty. Far too many are still languishing in prison because they are unable to capture media attention or garner the resources necessary to reverse their legal injustices.

The number of executions in the US are in decline even in Texas. A recent report by Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty found that only eight people were sentenced to death by Texas juries this year, the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. This year saw three prisoners received last-minute reprieves from the Supreme Court. Six prisoners had their sentences reduced on appeal, meaning that prosecutors, judges and/or juries had made serious errors in seeking justice.

Judge Fine knows his limitations and probably is just stirring up the public opinion pot. Even if the judge is able to move forward on his hearing and rules the death penalty unconsitutional, it will only apply to the Green case. But it is another nail in the coffin of a brutal and arbitrary form of punishment for which there is no reversal in the cases of wrongful state murder.

Voices like that of retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional add to the growing chorus against executions. Illinois is on the heels of repealing their death penalty law. Death penalty opponents in Missouri want to follow suit making the upcoming legislative session even more interesting. The US is in a small club of countries (China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq) still executing its citizens. Death penalty opponents and other freedom-loving people must step up our efforts to write the last chapter of this 34 year old saga.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical CongressNational Organizer. Click here to contact Ms. Rogers.