A Texas lawmaker is proposing a bill to end the death penalty in the Lone Star State

A Texas state attorney general has introduced legislation to end the state’s death penalty amid a high-profile death row currently underway.

Democratic state Rep. John Bucy III has introduced the bill in the upcoming legislative session.

“I think I’ve been against the death penalty my whole life because I’ve thought about its use, and we should have it in our society,” Bucy said, according to Fox 7.

“Financially, if you want to look at it economically, we spend more money to convict than to keep someone in prison, so it’s really a lose-lose situation with a lot of risk if we don’t do it right,” he continued.

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This comes after the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way last week for the state to set a new date for the execution of inmate Robert Roberson, whose first execution was delayed last month.

Roberson is currently on death row because of his conviction when prosecutors say he killed his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, by shaking her to death, known as shaken baby syndrome. But her lawyers say Nikki actually died of other health issues such as pneumonia and that new evidence proves her innocence. His lawyers also said that doctors failed to rule out these other medical explanations for the child’s symptoms.

Roberson was scheduled to be executed on October 17 before the state Supreme Court ruled to delay his execution shortly before it was suspended.

If he is executed, he would be the first person in the US to be executed in a case based on the movement of a child’s disease.

More than 80 Texas state attorneys general, as well as prosecutors, medical professionals, parents’ rights groups, civil rights groups, best-selling novelist John Grisham and other advocates have asked the state to gave Roberson a favor on the belief that he is innocent. A team of state attorneys visited Roberson in prison to encourage him.

“I feel like I’ve become very involved with this Robert Roberson case and I want to make sure we continue this conversation about the inhumanity tied to the death penalty,” Bucy said.

Texas lawmakers meet with Robert Roberson at a prison in Livingston, Texas, on September 27, 2024. (Criminal Justice Reform Caucus via AP)

Texas has executed nearly 600 people since 1982, according to Texas Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty director Kristin Houle Cuellar.

“More than any other state in the nation,” Houle Cuellar told Fox 7. “We have a great reputation when it comes to the use of the death penalty in Texas.”

Houle Cuellar said there have been fewer death sentences in the state over the past decade, which he attributed in part to the 2005 introduction of life without parole.

“Prosecutors exercised that discretion by choosing not to seek the death penalty,” Houle Cuellar said. “Even in about 30% of the cases they tried where they wanted the death penalty, the judges refused.”

Houle Cuellar said Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Bexar counties lead the state in executions and more than half of all Texas counties have never carried out the death penalty.

Since 2007, several Texas lawmakers have tried to abolish the death penalty. But Bucy says there is enough momentum now regarding the issue of restoring the law to end this practice.

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An execution bed sits empty on Death Row on April 25, 1997 at Texas Death Row in Huntsville, Texas. (Getty Images)

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“Even though it’s a fight to end the death penalty in Texas, we’ve seen the number of executions go down,” he said. “I think that sentiment is changing, and I think that as we see these particular cases come to life, and we start to read some stories, people will become more concerned about the possibility of wrongdoing.”

State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and state Rep. Joe Moody, both Democrats, have filed similar bills to end the death penalty, which would need to be voted on by other lawmakers when the legislative session begins early next year.

In another case in Texas, a judge found last month that Melissa Lucio was innocent in the 2007 death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. State Superior Court Judge Arturo Nelson recommended Lucio’s guilty verdict and death sentence be overturned. The judge also found that prosecutors suppressed evidence and testimony, including the statements of Lucio’s other children, that could support the allegations that he was not abusive and that Mariah’s death was accidental due to a fall down the stairs.