Nov. 21
TEXAS:
TEXAS COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
3400 Montrose Blvd., Suite 312
Houston, TX 77006
RACISM SEEN IN HARRIS COUNTY DEATH PENALTY CASES
A review of the executions coming out of Harris County during 2004 reveals
that 100% of the people executed and scheduled to be executed are
minorities. 8 executions have already occurred and one more, Frances
Newton, an African-American woman, is currently scheduled for December 1.
Seven of the 9 are African-American and 2 are Hispanic.
According to David Atwood of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty, racism has always been a factor in who does and doesn't get
executed in Texas. 40% of the people on Texas death row are
African-American vs. 12% in the general population. However, for Harris
County, 54% of the people on death row are African-American vs. 18% in the
general population. "I don't think you can explain that large a
discrepancy by just saying that African-Americans are involved in more
crime", says Atwood. "Besides, nationwide studies as well as studies by
the Texas Defender Service have shown that race is clearly a factor in who
does and doesn't get the death penalty. Race enters into decisions on whom
to charge with capital murder and in the selection of juries. A number of
African-Americans have been found guilty and given the death penalty by
juries that were all white or nearly all white."
On December 1, opponents of the death penalty will be protesting the
execution of Frances Newton at the corner of Shepherd and Westheimer in
Houston. Protests will also be held at the Walls Unit in Huntsville as
well as in other cities in Texas - Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, etc.
Says Atwood, "Racial and economic biases, as well as the arbitrary and
capricious nature of the death penalty, clearly show that the death
penalty is unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. In addition, the death penalty is totally unnecessary for
societal protection. Long-term incarceration of dangerous criminals can
protect society".
(source: Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty)
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Supremes to Texas appeals court: You still don't get it
If President Bush gets to make a Supreme Court nomination, surely he won't
mess about with any of the merely conservative wussies scattered about on
U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. He can drop back down to Austin and tap one
of the truly irredeemable die-hards on the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals.
Like Bush, judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals, the top state court in
criminal cases, hold their views firmly and forthrightly, no matter how
wrong the U.S. Supreme Court keeps telling the Texas judges those views
are. These aren't disputes about ethereal legal details. They are fights
about key points in the state's increasingly discredited capital
punishment assembly line.
A majority of the appeals court judges have dug in their heels in a way
not seen since state courts resisted federal court rulings during the
civil rights movement.
"There is a sense in which this recalls desegregation days," said Jordan
Steiker, the University of Texas law professor who brought the capital
case, LaRoyce Lathair Smith v. Texas, that prompted the latest Supreme
Court slap-down of the state appeals court.
Smith is an obviously bad dude, but with an IQ of 78. He killed a former
co-worker at a Taco Bell in Dallas by bludgeoning her and shooting her in
the back as part of a robbery. But, the funny old Constitution requires
that Smith receive a fair trial; which he did not.
At issue is the state district court's instructing jurors about how they
may treat mitigating circumstances, such as IQ, which could have led them
to choose life imprisonment over the death penalty. In reviewing the
transparently faulty trial, the Court of Criminal Appeals simply refused
to follow Supreme Court guidance.
As the Supreme Court said last week, the state court "erroneously relied
on a test we never countenanced and now have unequivocally rejected."
Just to emphasize the point, and its understandable exasperation with the
state court, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of accepting the case
and reversing the Texas appeals court without even hearing oral arguments.
Yes, summary reversal. It was an unsigned 7-2 opinion of 12 pages, from
which the most reliable hangin' justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas, dissented, but without either writing separately to explain his
views.
Such procedural truncation is "extremely rare," said Arthur D. Hellman,
professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh. "Maybe one a term from a
state court."
The Supreme Court's message was clear.
"It saw an error in this case that was extreme and blatant," said James
Liebman, a Columbia University law professor.
The no-argument/reversal tack is used only "when the justices think the
lower court's 'transgression' is particularly obvious," said Stephen
Wasby, professor emeritus of political science at the New York state
University at Albany.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, since the pivotal Penry mitigation decision
in 1989, has fought almost every step of the way as the Supreme Court has
spelled out how Texas must proceed if it is determined to be the national
leader in state-sponsored executions.
But the Texas appeals court construed the Supreme Court's opinion so
narrowly, said Jim Marcus, with the Texas Defender Service, that "your
name about had to be Penry" to get relief. "And then not even that was
enough," Marcus said of the Supreme Court having to revisit the case in
Penry II. The methods used by the state appeals court changed, but the
manifest recalcitrance remained the same.
Another chapter in a Texas death penalty case, known as Miller-El, is to
be argued again soon before the Supreme Court because the Court of
Criminal Appeals and its partner in deliberate obtuseness, the 5th U.S.
Circuit of Appeals, refused to recognize blatant racial discrimination in
jury selection.
When Miller-El was argued before the Supreme Court in 2002, Justice
Anthony Kennedy, hardly a flaming liberal, observed that the state's view
of the evidence of discrimination was "a little bit odd." By the time
Kennedy wrote the court's 8-1 opinion in the case in 2003, he felt obliged
to note the "dismissive and strained interpretation" of precedent.
As if the appeals courts weren't busy enough misapplying Supreme Court
rulings in mitigation and racial discrimination cases, another notorious
sleeping-lawyer case, from Houston, is in the pipeline for them to mangle.
This is not happenstance.
As Steiker pointed out in Smith's appeal, the state court was not too
subtly challenging the Supreme Court's role as the final arbiter, short of
amendment, of constitutional questions. The appeals court "implicitly
challenges" the Supreme Court's constitutional role, Steiker wrote.
The Supreme Court caught right on, with even Chief Justice William
Rehnquist joining the 7-justice Smith majority.
"You don't have to read between the lines to see that the Supreme Court
was impatient," Marcus said. "Whether the Court of Criminal Appeals is
bothered by this is another matter."
(source: Viewpoints, Cragg Hines, Houston Chronicle)
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State rep calls for moratorium on executions in Texas
Rep. Elliot Naishtat, D-Austin, wants to study DNA testing and Texas death
penalty before any more prisoners are executed.
Naishtat spoke about his proposal that could lead to a temporary
suspension of executions at the State Capitol on Friday.
"We need a moratorium so that we can seriously review how the death
penalty is administered in Texas," Naishtat said.
He said there are systemic problems in the way we administer justice.
He also cited a Scripps Howard Poll, released last week that shows 70 % of
Texans believe the state has executed innocent people.
Naishtat said his legislation would give the governor the power to act.
"Right now, even if Governor Rick Perry wanted to, he doesn't have that
authority. Many other states have that authority," he said.
At the news conference, Naishtat was joined by Kirk Bloodworth, the 1st
person in the country to be exonerated from death row with DNA testing.
"I'm lucky to be standing here because if I didnt have DNA I'd be a
corpse. And I think many people in the prison system, especially on death
row, are in jeopardy of being corpses," Bloodsworth said.
Naishtat's proposal will go before the legislature in January.
(source: News 8 Austin)
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Death sentence can be just
Last week, the United States Supreme Court overturned the death sentence
of one convicted Texas killer, ordered an appeals court to reconsider
another death row inmates case and granted a last-minute stay to another,
Troy Kunkle. Kunkle was scheduled to die for a murder he committed in
Corpus Christi in 1984. He was convicted of picking up a hitchhiker then
shooting him in the back of the head before stealing the victims wallet.
His attorneys argued that his troubled home life had left him mentally
scarred and depressed.
Kunkle received one stay in July, but the Supreme Court refused to review
the case last month. The stage was set for Kunkles latest reprieve last
Monday when the court overturned the death sentence of LaRoyce Lathair
Smith. In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled that jurors in his trial did not
consider Smiths "IQ scores and history of participation in special
education classes as a reason to impose a sentence more lenient that
death."
Kunkles lawyers then made the same argument that resulted in the courts
decision to grant a stay and ordered a review. There is no question that
he committed murder, only a question that he may have been predisposed to
so because of stress in early life.
Last year, 65 people were executed in the U.S. and Texas accounted for 24
of those. The courts decisions are the latest challenges to the Texas
criminal justice system. During the past year the court has also been
critical of how some prosecutors handled cases that resulted in a death
sentence.
A death sentence is a serious matter. Leading the nation in executions is
not something to be proud of, but we believe the death penalty is a
necessary part of the criminal justice system. We also believe that Texas
courts must do a better job of considering all evidence and mitigating
circumstances before handing down a death sentence. Only when the jury has
examined those mitigating circumstances can it make the determination that
a death sentence is just. That is what the Supreme Court has ruled.
Frances Newton convicted of the 1987 murder of her husband and 2 children
is the last death row inmate scheduled for execution this year.
(source: Editorial, Kerrville Daily Times)
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Texan of the Year nominee: Cowboy Kinky Friedman
After considerable reflection - there are, after all, 22 million of us
from whom to choose - I believe our Texan of the Year should be musician,
writer and humorist Kinky Friedman.
This is not solely in recognition of Mr. Friedman's accomplishments,
considerable though they are. No, I believe Mr. Friedman to be the purest
essence of what Texas represents in these difficult and divisive times:
gleeful, shameless, unrepentant, nuts-to-you incorrectness.
Think about it. Who would have thought the day would come when the words
"Texas" and "cowboy" were employed as terms of political derision? Yet in
this bitter election year, our noble home state - so wonderful, so great -
has been castigated by people in places like Boston and Paris and
Montpelier as the embodiment of pigheaded unilateralism.
And Mr. Friedman, like it or not, spoke on the state's behalf when he
answered such criticisms by appearing on the cover of Texas Monthly,
dressed in drag as the Queen of England, a dcollet neckline exposing his
hairy chest. He's sucking on a cigar and shooting the finger at the
camera.
He was the royal "we," though not the "we" of the British monarchy. He was
us, saying, "We're Texans and we don't care what you think!"
I nominate as 1st runner-up, and for the same reasons, indigenous musician
Ray Wylie Hubbard, for his barroom anthem "Screw You, We're From Texas."
Many Texans are filled with horror at such sentiments. Some mistakenly
believe this attitude to be rooted in partisan politics.
It's not. Mr. Friedman has put himself forward as a candidate for Texas
governor in 2006, calling for such eclectic measures as legalizing casino
gambling, reviewing cases of all death row inmates and outlawing the
declawing of cats. It's not exactly lifted from the pages of the red-state
playbook.
His campaign motto is Rise and Shine and Fight the Wussification of Texas,
and his bumper stickers say Kinky for Governor: Why the Hell Not?
The world and the United States and Texas are all changing, some places
more quickly than others.
But Texas, like Mr. Friedman, retains its defining characteristics. It's
iconoclastic, large, loud, vulgar, carnivorous and unapologetically macho.
It's the place where Lyndon Johnson was born and Davy Crockett came to
die.
The world may not think much of us, but we're not losing any sleep over
it. We're from Texas.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
