Texas State Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) says he is used to be considered a crank and an outlier when he regularly introduced a bill to abolish the state's death penalty.
But Dutton, who recently introduced the bill for the eighth time, tells News Radio 1200 WOAI he doesn't feel like that any more.
"I have had members who have said to be privately, 'you know, Harold, I really like that bill that you filed, but I just can't vote for it, because I'm afraid it won't get re-elected'."
Dutton points out that when he first filed his bill Texas was routinely executing fifty people per year, and had the busiest execution chamber in the country by far.
But last year, Texas only executed seven people, and, for the first time since the 1980s, Texas did not lead the nation in the number of people executed. In addition, only three people were sentenced to death by citizen juries in 2016.
Dutton says that is significant, and it shows that citizens who serve on juries are moving away from capital punishment, without any prodding from the Legislature, or from the courts.
"Now that the public is also beginning to have a clearer view of this whole issue relating to capital punishment, that has made even legislatures having to stop and take a look."
Several factors have played a role in rapidly decreasing public support for capital punishment.
The sight of people being declared to be innocent and walking out of jail after spending decades in prison, sometimes even on death row, have called into question in the 'irreversability' of capital punishment.
In addition, a new punishment of 'life without the possibility of parole' was passed by lawmakers in 2011, over the objections, ironically, of legislators who were afraid it would cut into support for capital punishment.
Dutton says the inability of the state to obtain drugs needed to carry out the lethal injection has served to magnify what an 'outlier' Texas is among First World democracies in continuing to carry out executions. That is magnified by tawdry scenes of executions carried out in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, which appear to be something more common in the 16th Century than in our modern era.
Outrage has recently also broken out over the state's use of the controversial 'law of parties' to put people to death.
That was most recently exemplified by a Kerrville man who was set to be executed last year for the murder of a gas station attendant which was carried out by another man.
Jeffrey Wood, who is still set to die for the crime, was sitting in a car in the parking lot when the victim was murdered. He didn't know his friend was going to kill the man, and didn't even know he had a gun.
The death penalty is not expected to be abolished in Texas this session, but Dutton says with every passing year, what was unimaginable in 2003, when he first introduced the bill, is getting closer to reality.
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