The Jury Condemned Michael Lopez to Death

Juries in Texas are not forgiving, and in late May a Houston jury considered whether or not to condemn to death a young man who was only 17 at the time he shot and killed a Houston police officer. The jury had taken two-and-a-half hours to find Michael Lopez guilty of capital murder. They had before them as evidence, a videotaped confession in which the defendant himself demonstrated the killing of an officer not much older than himself.

The trial phase was bad enough, but even at the sentencing where the defendant is allowed to present any mitigating circumstances which might arouse a sense of mercy in the jury, Lopez had almost nothing going for him.

A juvenile at the time of the killing, Lopez had an extensive prior record. He was first put under the supervision of the juvenile authorities when he was 12 years old. At that time, both his mother and father were already in the penitentiary and Lopez was released to elderly grandparents. Lopez had been required to attend both individual and family counseling, but it was not long before he was in trouble again.

By the time of the shooting, Lopez was on probation for auto burglary, weapons charges and drug possession. He had a history of inhalant abuse, and he was being supervised by a probation officer specializing in gang-affiliated youth. Gang members and their associates appeared in the courtroom to support their friend in full view of the jury.

Lopez had not only shot the officer in the neck, but after the officer fell, Lopez had stood over the officer and shot him again in the head. Lopez explained that he didn't want the officer shooting him in the back as he made his escape.

Lopez's explanations for his crimes were feeble. In the videotaped confession, he sat on a hillside, near the scene of the killing, calmly talking about how he was "kinda insane" at the time of the shooting. He said that he had run from the officer and shot him because he didn't want to be sent to a juvenile facility. He said he would miss his girlfriend. He said that he didn't want his girlfriend to go through the pain of missing him, and besides he wanted to be there when his father finally got out of prison.

Lopez was so impulsive and had so little understanding of the court process that he interrupted the prosecutor during her summation and started arguing that he had not been allowed to tell his side of the story. The judge had to have him removed from the court.

So, a 17-year-old Michael Lopez sat behind a table, beside court-appointed lawyers in a Texas courtroom facing death. He couldn't vote in Texas, he couldn't legally buy alcohol, but he could be executed in a state which has executed 7 juveniles since 1977.

Lopez had been imprisoned, released, supervised, punished and assigned to treatment for five years prior to the shooting. So, the jury was left with two alternatives. Either Lopez was an unredeemable offender, destined to commit more and more serious crimes and unable to be deterred either by the punishments or the treatment he had received, or Lopez was a kid that basically raised himself on the streets, tried to survive the best way he knew how and never really had a chance in the first place.

Even if the jury opted for a life sentence, in Texas that meant that Michael Lopez would only be eligible for parole in 40 years, when he would be almost 60.

The only word for the expressions on the faces of the family of Michael Lopez is agony. His grandparents who tried to control him, wept in the courtroom, and Lopez' father took the stand and begged to be blamed for his son's behavior. Lopez' mother was not even there. Nobody could find her.

The jury in Houston listened to the pleas for mercy and the evidence and condemned Michael Lopez to death.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child specifies that: "No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below 18 years of age." But the United States is one of the only countries in the world that has not yet ratified this international agreement, and 24 American states are members of an exclusive club consisting of nations like Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia which put juveniles to death.

But, in the end, in terms of society, what happens to Michael Lopez is irrelevant. As long as the problems of absent parents, poverty, gangs and drug abuse still remain, the society will simply create more and more Michael Lopez's, like a factory turning out widgets. We can't kill all of them, but society doesn't seem to be willing to change the conditions which produces the Michael Lopez's of the world.