So, we’re supposed to sing high praise because a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge has declared his opposition to the death penalty.

Is that what we’re supposed to do?

I would, except that Judge Tom Price is about to leave the state’s highest criminal appellate court in January, which makes his declaration a mere symbolic act.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/26/criminal-appeals-judge-price-i-oppose-death-penalt/

Price, who’s being replaced by Bert Richardson — the judge presiding over Gov. Rick Perry’s abuse of power court proceedings — wrote this, according to the Texas Tribune: “Given a substantial amount of consideration to the propriety of the death penalty as a form of punishment for those who commit capital murder, and I now believe that it should be abolished.”

Price’s statement came as he was one of three dissenting votes rejecting an appeal for clemency for death row inmate Scott Panetti, who’s scheduled to die by lethal injection in just a few days. Panetti’s been diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and death penalty foes have sought to have his death sentence commuted.

Price now is on board with them.

But he’s leaving the court.

So what good is his declaration … now?

Perhaps he can carry his opposition into the private sector and try to talk some reason into his former CCA colleagues who continue to reject other appeals on similar grounds.

“My conclusion is not reached hastily,” Price wrote in his dissent. “Rather, it is the result of my deliberative thought process from having presided over three death-penalty trials as a trial court judge and having decided countless issues related to capital murder and the death penalty as a judge on this court.”

Price didn’t seek re-election this year. He’s served on the all-Republican CCA since being elected in 1996. I applaud his coming out against capital punishment. I now hope he carries the campaign forward.