Controversy Builds in Texas Over an Execution (NYT)

[struggle4progress]

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: October 19, 2009

HOUSTON — Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues surrounding capital punishment have rarely stirred such controversy ...

“There is a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don’t look up one day and determine that we as the State of Texas have executed someone who is in fact innocent,” Mr. White, a Democrat who was governor from 1983 to 1987, told The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News ...

Three weeks ago Mr. Perry replaced the chairman and two other members of the State Forensic Science Commission, which was about to hold hearings on the evidence in the case. The new chairman, a close ally of the governor, promptly canceled a hearing at which a second, independent arson expert was to testify. The commission’s expert, Craig L. Beyler of Baltimore, had concluded in a lengthy report that the evidence did not prove that Mr. Willingham set the fire that killed his three daughters in 1991 ...

So popular is the death penalty here that Mr. Perry’s main opponent in next year’s Republican primary for governor, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, has taken the rather novel approach of suggesting that his actions have lent ammunition to opponents of capital punishment ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/us/20texas.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. Mark White: One of the better governors of the Great State of Texas

Second only to Ann Richards.

[Turbineguy]

2. I think it goes deeper than that.

The Justice system has to work so that Defense lawyers don't work to get the guilty off no matter what, countered by notch-in-the-gun prosecutors who need to send somebody to jail. The Defense is supposed to make the Prosecution prove its case. Nothing more.

[Aragorn]

3. Almost all Texans

do not want an innocent person sentenced to anything. Exceptions include a broken justice system and especially, its front-line - the cops. And only some of the cops at that.