Jonathan Bruce Reed, whose capital case was overturned by a federal court this week, is not the only person to spend more than a quarter century on death row in Texas.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, Mr. Reed is one of 16 inmates who have been on death row for 25 years or more. The longest serving death row inmate is Ronald Chambers, also convicted of a horrific murder in Dallas. He’s been on the row since 1976.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said studies on long-running capital cases, are few but the older a case is, the harder it is to re-try and the more attractive a plea bargain may be.
One analysis of capital appeals nationwide, found that in cases more than 25 years old, “a high percentage were overturned, and when they were re-tried, the ones that were retried, 80 percent received a sentence less than death,” Mr. Dieter said.