FORT WORTH — Texas has long been known as the death penalty capital of the United States. And the death penalty capital of Texas, according to a report released this week, is Tarrant County.

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Almost a quarter of the death penalty trials held in Texas since 2020 have been in Tarrant County, a jurisdiction that contains only 7% of the state’s population, the report said.

“Tarrant County wields an outsized influence on the Texas death penalty landscape — not because of its size, but because of its extraordinary willingness to pursue capital charges,” according to a statement issued by Texas Defender Service, which authored the report.

The study also found that 92% of the death sentences sought by Tarrant County — west of Dallas and home to Fort Worth — since 2012 have been against racial and ethnic minorities.

In a written statement to The Dallas Morning News. Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells said he doesn’t know the race of a defendant when deciding whether to seek the death penalty He said he considers the facts of the case, the defendant’s history and likelihood to commit other crimes among other factors before reaching a decision.

Sorrells said he has pursued the death penalty in 8 of the 109 capital murder cases brought to him by police, resulting in two guilty pleas and five death sentences.

“My job is to seek justice and give a voice to the victims of these horrific crimes and hold defendants accountable,” he said.

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The Austin-based organization, which seeks to end mass incarceration and executions in the state, hosted a press conference about its findings Thursday at the old Tarrant County Courthouse.

“Of the last 13 people who have gone to trial (for capital murder) in Tarrant County have pretty much all been Black,” Estelle Hebron-Jones, an attorney and director of special projects for the Texas Defender Service said during the conference. “One person was a Native American and the one white person was not an American-born person.”

Next week, Texas is expected to hit a milestone with its 600th execution. Edward Busby, a Tarrant County man convicted of killing a 77-year-old woman in 2004, is scheduled to be executed May 12. Busby is Black and considered mentally disabled, with an IQ of 70.

And while Tarrant County pursues the majority of the state’s death penalty cases, it frequently is unsuccessful the report found. In those cases, Hebron Jones said her organization believes Tarrant County prosecutors charge defendants with capital murder in an effort to get them to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

Earlier this week, a Tarrant County jury voted for the death penalty in the case of Tanner Horner, a white man who abducted and killed a 7-year-old girl. The report does not include Horner’s case because it originated in Wise County.

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