Death, be not proud
Nothing is as certain as the pace of executions in Bush's Texas
By Margaret Carlson
February 14, 2000
Web posted at: 5:55 p.m. EST (2255 GMT)
George W. Bush has at least one distinction as Governor: since he
took office in 1995 his state has seen more executions--119--than
any other. Just as he was beginning his presidential campaign in
1998, the case of convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker came up
for review. Religious leaders from Pat Robertson to the Pope
pleaded with Bush to spare Tucker. Like Bush himself, she had
found Christ in midlife. He could have issued a 30-day reprieve
and signaled to the parole board that Tucker should be granted
clemency. He didn't. Although he said he was anguished by the
decision, in an interview in Talk magazine, writer Tucker Carlson
described Bush mimicking the woman's final plea for her life.
"'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation,
'don't kill me.'"
Swaggering past the death house still works in Texas, where
crowds gather outside the Huntsville death chamber to cheer on
the executioner. But lately more Americans, including some
Republicans, are questioning how just the practice is. Governor
George Ryan of Illinois, a conservative Republican, halted all
executions in his state on Jan. 31, after concluding the system
was "fraught with error." Thirteen people scheduled for death in
Illinois had been exonerated. Three of them were freed after a
journalism class at Northwestern University proved someone else
had committed the crimes. One of the three came within two days
of dying. Of 12 others who were executed, one is now believed to
have been innocent. That was enough for Ryan. "Until I can be
sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing
a lethal injection," he said, "no one will meet that fate."
After Ryan's action, Bush said he has no such qualms. "Everybody
who's been executed [in Texas] is guilty of the crime of which
they've been convicted," he said, adding that all the convicts
had had "full access to the courts."
But that just isn't so. Death in Texas, where there are about 450
capital cases pending, is swift. The postconviction review office
was shut down five years ago, and there is no public-defender
service to speak of. Judges, most of them supporters of the death
penalty, tend to appoint poorly trained and poorly paid lawyers.
Rarely is there money for investigators. Justice is so blind that
some defense lawyers can sleep undisturbed at trial: George
McFarland's lawyer dozed throughout his in 1991, yet his verdict
was upheld. Bad lawyering is so notorious in Texas that the
legislature, not known for coddling criminals, last year
unanimously passed a bill to modestly improve counsel for
indigent defendants. Bush vetoed it.
While Bush stands out for his unblinking certainty, he is not
alone in his enthusiasm for the death penalty. In the midst of
soaring crime rates, squishy judges and lenient parole boards,
politicians tripped over themselves to embrace capital punishment
after the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. An Old Democrat
could become a New Democrat by switching positions. Hillary
Clinton recently showed her anticrime credentials by coming out
for it in her Senate race.
Americans still support the death penalty, but not with the
ferocity they felt when it was an abstraction, or when softheaded
judges were letting murderers walk on a technicality. Movies like
The Hurricane and Dead Man Walking, as well as last week's
episode of The West Wing, show the awful drama behind the
practice.
People too have seen the guilty go free and innocent men get sent
to death row. The country watched as O.J. Simpson, who many
thought was the "real killer," got off with the help of expensive
lawyers. Eighty-five once-doomed men who were fortunate enough to
have their cases taken up have been saved from the death chamber,
according to Yale's Steven Bright, who directs the Southern
Center for Human Rights. That number, he says, should shake the
criminal-justice system to its core.
All this may not have slowed Bush, but others are taking a second
look. The Roman Catholic Church, recognizing its prior
inconsistency, now defends the life of the felon along with the
life of the fetus. As crime rates have fallen, legislation has
been introduced in six states that would put a moratorium on
further executions. Last week Senator Patrick Leahy proposed a
bill that would force states to provide competent counsel along
with DNA testing in capital cases.
It is curious that Bush, who seems ambivalent about so many
things, would be so unflinchingly sure of himself when it comes
to carrying out the death penalty. He has chosen a parole board
that has been known to spend as little as 15 minutes reviewing
some cases. In Texas, where speed and efficiency are highly
valued, allowing a moral struggle to slow down the process might
be viewed as weak. But as Bush goes about the country campaigning
for the presidency, showing a little doubt in the face of
life-and- death decisions would lend weight to his claim to be a
compassionate conservative.
--With reporting by Hilary
Hylton/Austin
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