Sept. 9
TEXAS:
Rick Perry's Death Penalty Record is Nothing to Brag About
There were a couple of telling moments in Wednesday's Republican debate. One
was when a question about 9/11, and President Obama's decision to attack and
execute Osama bin Laden drew not a single clap. The other was when Gov. Rick
Perry, with an almost-feral expression on his face, bragged about executing 234
people in Texas, and a large portion of the audience applauded.
It's entirely possible that Wednesday's audience was what Shirley Jackson
envisioned when she wrote The Lottery.
One of the people put to death, Cameron Todd Willingham, was quite possibly
innocent. And if not for an exhaustive Texas Monthly investigation that freed
another death row inmate, Perry would have been fine with Texas executing a
provably innocent man, Anthony Graves, last year.
Perry defensively touched on the Willingham case last when he mentioned
offenders who kill children—Willingham was accused of murdering his three
children by arson. Perry directly intervened to interrupt the exculpatory
forensic process in the Willingham case, replacing three members of the Texas
Forensic Science Commission, and kept the execution moving forward. He refused
a stay of execution, despite mounting evidence against the arson accusation.
Perry's eagerness and braggadocio on the subject are disturbing. He told
moderator Brian Williams that he hadn't lost a wink of sleep at night over any
of the executions. I don't know about you, but if I'd presided over the deaths
of more than 200 people, it would be cause for more than a few moments of
self-reflection
Several years ago, one of my friends served as a cabinet member for a governor
in another southern state. There were multiple appeals for clemency from
prisoners on death row. None were granted, and the executions were carried out.
But those responsible for making recommendations to the governor took their
task to heart, did their due diligence, and were acutely conscious that they
were signing off on the state putting a man to death. They lost plenty of sleep
over it, and they weren't flip about it.
I am, like many people, conflicted about the death penalty. I recognize that
there may be some circumstances in which it can be justified. The world is a
better place without Ted Bundy in it.
But I also believe, despite our best intentions, it is beyond our flawed human
capacity to implement the death penalty fairly, and that the Ted Bundys of the
world are few and far between. Most death penalty cases are far more mundane
and born of a combination of race, poverty, circumstance, and an overburdened
judicial system. Too often the death penalty is an instrument of revenge, not
justice.
Rick Perry's enthusiasm to the contrary, bragging about how many people your
state has executed isn't an applause line, and it doesn't qualify you to be
president.
(source: Laura K. Chapin is a Democratic communications strategist based in
Denver, Colorado, advocating for progressive causes and candidates in the Rocky
Mountain West; US News & World Report)
*****************************
Exonerated Texas Inmate: “How Can You Applaud Death:?
Anthony Graves read in the newspaper about the crowd at the Republican
presidential debate applauding the fact that Gov. Rick Perry had authorized 234
executions during his tenure.
“How can you applaud death?” Graves asked.
Graves is 1 of 12 death row inmates who have been exonerated in Texas since
1973. Five of those exonerations occurred while Rick Perry was governor,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes capital
punishment.
“The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place in
which when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens they
get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the
Supreme Court if that’s required,” Perry said during the debate Wednesday.
Perry defended the use of the death penalty in his state and told the audience,
“I think Americans understand justice.”
But Graves said his mother would not be one of those Americans. Graves spent 18
years in prison and 12 years on death row as a convicted murder. In 2010 his
conviction was overturned and he was released.
“He should ask my mother about that, ” he says. “She lost her son for 18
years.”
Graves says he was stunned at the governor’s comments because he was exonerated
less than a year ago. “I was exonerated from the very same system that he is
boasting about. He’s a politician, but I’m an exoneree and I think I know more
about the subject.”
In fact Perry was quick to admit in 2010 that Graves’ murder conviction had
been a miscarriage of justice. The governor worked to pass a bill that lead to
Graves being awarded $1 million for his incarceration. But Perry also said last
year that Graves case proves that the system worked.
In 2010 the governor said of the case, ”I think we have a justice system that
is working, and he’s a good example of–you continue to find errors that were
made and clear them up,” according to an account in the Lubbock
Avalanche-Journal.
Graves had been convicted of assisting in multiple murders in 1992. In 2006,
the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit overturned his conviction citing
that prosecutors had made false statements. A special prosecutor hired for the
second trial realized after months of investigation that Graves was innocent.
Former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Siegler told the Houston
Chronicle, “This is not a case where the evidence went south with time or
witnesses passed away or we just couldn’t make the case anymore. He is an
innocent man.”
Graves says he appreciates the work that Perry did to work for his
compensation. “He passed a bill that lead to my compensation, but he knows
there is a problem with the criminal justice system.”
(source: ABC News)
********************
Rick Perry’s Lethal Overconfidence ---- Despite loads of evidence, Rick Perry
says he’s 'never struggled' with the idea that Texas has executed an innocent
person. Lawyer David R. Dow on Perry’s foolish hubris.
Jaws dropped when the governor of Texas, running for president, said on
national television that he was “100 percent sure” everyone who had been
executed on his watch was guilty. The governor was George W. Bush, appearing on
NBC’s Meet the Press, during his first presidential run. 6 months before Bush’s
election, Texas executed Gary Graham, who continued to protest his innocence
even as the lethal injection was killing him and whose objections were almost
certainly true. Then, just before Bush moved to the White House, Texas executed
Claude Jones. Last year, new DNA testing on a hair found at the crime scene
cast doubt on Jones’s guilt.
Rick Perry likes to say that while President Bush went to Yale, he went to
Texas A&M, which I guess is meant to imply that Bush is smarter than he is. But
when it comes to their confidence in Texas’s executions, the two are equally
idiotic. Asked at Wednesday night’s presidential debate if he ever worried that
Texas had executed an innocent person on his watch, Perry answered, “I’ve never
struggled with that at all.”
Certainty is cheap if one achieves it by ignoring the actual facts, and indeed,
Perry’s answer to the death-penalty question asked of him Wednesday night
reflected a staggering inattentiveness to the facts. As the founder of the
Texas Innocence Project, I’ve had a couple of dozen clients executed during
Perry’s tenure as governor. There are some I think could well have been
innocent—Frances Newton, for example, who supposedly killed her husband and two
children without getting even a spot of blood or speck of gunpowder on herself;
or Charles Nealy, who did not remotely match the description of the person who
killed the convenience store clerk. But there was no DNA in either case, and so
I am left being unsure.
It is not weak to be unsure. It is the only reasonable position in those murder
cases—and it is the vast majority of them—that lack DNA evidence. Without DNA,
certainty is usually impossible. Murderers get convicted on the basis of
confessions, which can be coerced; eyewitness identifications, which can be
mistaken; and pseudo-science like fiber analysis, which is often junk.
Perry, however, continues to voice his confidence despite widespread evidence
that the system is flawed. Anthony Graves spent 14 years on death row before
being exonerated and released in 2010. He’s not the only one: Ernest Willis,
Michael Toney, Michael Blair, and Robert Springsteen are just a few of the
others who have been released from death row during Perry’s tenure. Maybe Perry
has a good reason for believing that these are Texas’s only mistakes, but if he
has such a reason, I don’t have any idea what it is.
Then there’s Cameron Todd Willingham, whose case suggests we probably don’t
catch errors all in time. He was executed in 2004–on Perry’s watch–for killing
his three children by setting fire to their house. The problem is, every
national arson expert to have reviewed the facts (there have been at least
four) has concluded that the fire was accidental. A committee investigating the
case was preparing to hear from the nation’s leading arson expert who intended
to explain why there was no evidence that Willingham had committed any crime.
On the eve of the expert’s testimony, Perry dissolved the committee.
But when it comes to their confidence in Texas’s executions, Bush and Perry are
equally idiotic.
As Perry prepares for his presidential run, he’s showing no signs of doubts.
It’s not just his debate answer. Next week, the state is set to execute my
client, Duane Buck. At Buck’s trial, the prosecutor urged the jury to sentence
him to death on the basis that because Buck was black, he would be dangerous in
the future. Earlier this summer, I had a client executed whose lawyer neglected
to raise any issues during the very appellate process Perry lauded during
Wednesday’s debate as a safeguard against mistakes. Two years ago, I had a
client executed after prosecutors had removed all the blacks from the jury. One
of my intellectually disabled clients was executed because his previous lawyer
neglected to inform the court of the inmate’s IQ score. Another client was
executed because the court of appeals refused to stay open past 5 p.m. so we
could file a last-minute appeal. I don’t know of any definition of fair that
could be applied to these cases.
Despite Perry’s certainty, and his characterization of a broken and racist
regime as fair, the people of Texas seem to have developed a different view.
Twenty years ago, there were 35 or sometimes 40 new death sentences a year.
Last year there were nine. The year before that there were eight. The very
people who have to decide whether someone should live or die seem to know there
is no such thing as certainty. The bad news for Perry is that those same people
vote for president.
(source: The Daily Beast)
****************
Sept. 13--237--Steven Woods-----------------------------474
Sept. 15--238--Duane Buck--------------------------------475
Sept. 20--239--Cleve Foster-------------------------------476
Sept. 21--240--Lawrence Brewer-------------------------477
Oct. 27---241--Frank Garcia------------------------------478----50%
Nov. 9----242--Hank Skinner------------------------------479----50 + %
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
_______________________________________________
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/deathpenalty@lists.washlaw.edu/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A free service of WashLaw
http://washlaw.edu
(785)670.1088
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
