ABSTRACT
Abolitionists have used the phenomenon of wrongful conviction to change the story about capital punishment and the public's understanding of what is at stake when the state kills. Abolitionists against the death penalty claiming that it has not been, and cannot be, administered in a manner that is compatible with legal system's fundamental commitments to fair and equal treatment. The salience of new abolitionist rhetoric was also seen in the American Bar Association's (ABA) resolution in 1997, which called for a moratorium on capital punishment. The ABA resolution said that "the death penalty as currently administered is not compatible with central values in Constitution". Texas has a long and storied death penalty history dating back to the period before it became a state. Throughout most of that history, executions were carried out in the locality in which the crime was committed or the criminal was captured.
