>From Abolish-L: The hanging governor Did execution-happy George W. Bush sign off on the lethal injection of an innocent man? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Alan Berlow May 11, 2000 | On June 22, 36-year-old Gary Graham, who has been on Texas' death row for more than half his life, is scheduled to be executed. If all goes according to plan, Graham, who now goes by the name of Shaka Sankofa, will become the 22nd person put to death in Texas this year, and the 135th since George W. Bush became governor. Although Texas executions have become fairly routine -- 13 are scheduled for May and June alone -- the execution of Graham is certain to prove notable. You wouldn't expect Graham to evoke much sympathy from the governor -- or many people, for that matter. As a teenage thug, Graham went on a weeklong rampage of 22 robberies and assaults. He was found passed out, drunk and naked, in the bed of a 57-year-old taxi driver who accused him of raping her, at which point he was arrested for the murder of Bobby Lambert. Today Graham, who has been taken to the Texas death chamber on three previous dates, insists he will "fight like hell" and "physically resist" efforts to kill him, and he has called on his supporters to "take up arms to defend our rights by any means necessary." Given Bush's near-perfect record of spurning clemency requests in capital cases (he's granted it just once), Graham's anticipated appeal would appear a certain nonstarter. In 1998, Bush denied clemency to Karla Faye Tucker, the cute, white, born-again Christian, despite appeals from the pope and Pat Robertson. In February he signed off on the execution of Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old great-grandmother, despite evidence that strongly suggests her own attorney -- who secured literary and movie rights to her story, and later served a three-year federal prison sentence for extorting a bribe in another murder case -- gave her miserable representation. Nevertheless, Graham's case is likely to prove problematic for the governor because the condemned man, unlike Tucker, claims he is innocent. A lot of people believe him. Graham's attorneys will argue that his conviction was based entirely on the testimony of a single witness who picked Graham out of a lineup after first being shown a photograph of Graham by police. Graham's case also resurrects the unpleasant question of whether Bush, in his unstinting embrace of Texas-style justice, has tolerated the execution of innocent people. That question has come up with increasing regularity since January, when Bush's Illinois campaign chairman, Gov. George Ryan, announced a moratorium on executions in his state because 13 innocent people had been discovered on the state's death row since 1977 (more people than Illinois executed during the same period). A supporter of the death penalty, Ryan said, "I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life." For Ryan, 13 innocents was too many. Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." Not surprisingly, reporters immediately began wondering how many erroneous death sentences Bush would abide. Seven men have been released from Texas' death row in the past dozen years, including one under Bush, after courts determined that they had been wrongly condemned. Critics claim the only reason more people haven't been released is because the state has already executed them. It naturally raises questions about the guilt of the other people on its heavily populated death row (population 462, second only to California's). Conservative luminaries Pat Robertson and George Will recently got religion on the issue, expressing concerns about the possibility that innocent people may be executed, given that 87 wrongfully condemned individuals have been freed from the nation's death rows since 1976. And Thursday, the newly formed National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions, whose members include death penalty supporters such as William S. Sessions, the former Texas judge and FBI director in the Reagan and Bush administrations, will call for a reexamination of the process that leads to wrongful death sentences. A short list of the committee's concerns reads like a legal brief of the problems in the Texas judicial system, including inadequate provision of counsel; short filing deadlines; limits on evidentiary hearings that prevent defendants from presenting new evidence; and the execution of juveniles (such as Graham, who was 17 at the time of the offense) and the mentally ill, both of which Bush endorses. Bush has, of course, found a receptive audience for his strong anti-crime and pro-death-penalty position in Texas. But it is not yet clear how this will play with voters who are not used to reading about an execution each week. The Illinois moratorium and publicity about wrongful convictions -- including the recent movie "The <http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2000/01/07/hurricane/index.html> Hurricane," about the wrongful conviction of boxer Rubin Carter -- accompany polls that show public support for the death penalty, at 66 percent, is the lowest it has been in 19 years. The "compassionate conservative" in Bush realizes he must not appear completely callous on the subject of taking a human life. In his campaign autobiography, "A Charge <http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/11/23/bush/index1.html> to Keep," he writes: "The worst nightmare of a death penalty supporter and of everyone who believes in our criminal justice system is to execute an innocent man." Nevertheless, Bush signed off on at least one execution in which the condemned man had a compelling claim of innocence. And many people believe Gary Graham is likely to be the next. Bush has never commented publicly on the 1997 execution of David Wayne Spence, but the case is worth examining both because Spence made a compelling claim of innocence, and because his case goes directly to the governor's role in the state's execution process. Under Texas law, Bush can only commute a death sentence if he receives a recommendation to do so from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Absent such a recommendation, Bush's legal authority is limited to granting a 30-day reprieve. Bush has used this legal technicality repeatedly to suggest that he actually has no power to stop an execution, and he seems to believe his own rhetoric. Following the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, Bush said, "Despite the call being sounded around the country and world, I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison." And shortly before Betty Lou Beets was executed last February, Bush's office issued a press release with this afterthought: "Note: Governor Bush does not have the independent authority to stop the execution of Betty Lou Beets." In reality, no one honestly believes that Bush could not have stopped the execution of Tucker, Beets or any other death-row inmate had he seen fit to do so. "One of the myths in Texas is that the governor doesn't have any power," says David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston. "All the governor has to do is communicate his wishes to the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles who are, after all, his political appointees, and they will do exactly what he wants." Dow notes that in the one case where Bush commuted a death sentence to life in prison -- serial killer Henry Lee Lucas -- the governor made it clear what he thought and the board carried it out. _____ EcoNews http://www.ecologynews.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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