PAT SULLIVAN/Associated Press
A technician in the Houston Police Department's crime lab peered into a microscope during tests in June. Flaws in the lab's testing have raised death penalty concerns.
HOUSTON – Edward Green lived two hours longer than expected. It wasn't because there was a serious possibility that the death-row inmate was innocent but because of growing evidence that Houston and Harris County have been guilty of running a shoddy justice system.
The inmate, who confessed to killing an elderly couple he robbed in 1992, was supposed to be executed at 6 p.m. Oct. 5. But the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of his appeal, citing problems at the Houston crime lab, delayed the lethal injection until after 8 p.m.The tardy proceedings that night, some say, suggest that endless bad news out of Harris County poses a serious threat to the death penalty in Texas.
"I'm worried about the courts," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice and a capital punishment supporter. "But I'm also worried what Texans think of the Texas criminal justice system."
The U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment once before because of mounting evidence of unfairness in several states. The justices overturned old laws, old ways of doing things and imposed new standards, resulting in a nationwide moratorium from 1967 to 1977.
bnichols@dallasnews.com
