Let the Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah

Summers had grown up with Jurek’s older brother and knew the Adams family, too. Shortly before his trial, Jurek was appointed two attorneys: George Middaugh, a part-time lawyer who also ran a lumber mill, and Emmett Summers III, who had finished law school three months before the murder. The case of Jerry Jurek-and the many what-might-have-beens along his path through the legal system-helps explain why. Since 1972, Texas has carried out more than 500 of the country’s roughly 1,500 executions. As one of the first death sentences under the new law, Jurek’s case would become a test case, playing a key role in both the nationwide rise of the death penalty and Texas’s place at the center. raced to write new laws, and by May 1973, Texas had one on the books. But one year earlier, the Supreme Court had struck down every death penalty law in the country. This all might have amounted to a straightforward small-town murder case, one of thousands every year resolved through a plea deal or a short trial, and Jurek might have faded into the rising wave of mass incarceration. I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me but she said no and started screaming and yelled ‘help’ and ‘please don't kill me.’ So I started choking her.” Jurek was charged with “murder in the course of kidnapping and attempted rape.” Prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty. “I asked her if she had ever had sex before and she said yes. “I did not tell the truth about the conversation I had with Wendy at the river…and I now herein wish to correct that statement,” reads his second confession, using oddly formal language. Prosecutors remained suspicious about whether Jurek was telling them the whole truth, and they continued to press him.

“I got mad at her and jerked her off the truck and grabbed Wendy around her throat and choked her to death she tried to talk to me to get me to stop but I wouldn't listen.” Sheriff’s deputies found her body floating face down in the river below the bridge.

“Wendy told me that I shouldn't be drinking, and that I was just like my brother who drinks a lot,” he said in a written confession. She climbed into his truck and he drove to a bridge just outside of town. He said he’d been drinking and invited Adams to go “riding around” with him. Jurek initially denied involvement, but eventually confessed. These are the stories that you need to know about capital punishment's past, as well as its uncertain future.

Let the Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah