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Texas Enacts Life Without Parole Law
The bill was sponsored by Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, and had generated strong opposition from victims rights groups and district attorneys from the larger cities in Texas who believed that the life-without-parole option would make it harder to get juries to mete out the death penalty. The original version of the bill would have added life without parole as a third sentencing option, but, bowing to the political pressure of the district attorneys who claimed having three options would confuse jurors; Lucio revised the bill to make life without parole the only alternative to the death penalty in capital cases.
Texas is the 48th state to adopt a life-without-parole option, better known as death by incarceration. The law took effect September 1, 2005.
Source: Austin American Statesman.
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