Identify the three reasons behind the decrease in the use of the death penalty in Texas, and explain why each change has occurred.

What will be an ideal response?

The ideal answer should include:
1. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court held that persons who were 17 years old or younger at the time the capital crime was committed could not be executed. In Texas, several death row inmates were transferred to the general population because of this ruling.
2. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not execute persons with intellectual disabilities on the basis that doing so violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Consequently, the death sentences of 28 death row inmates with intellectual disabilities were commuted to life in prison.
3. Jurors who had sentenced individuals to death were troubled by the requirement that they choose either the death penalty or sentencing the person to live with the chance for parole after 40 years. Jurors said they chose the death penalty in order to keep an offender from ever being free again. Because of a change in legislation, juries can now choose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.