AlterNet: 200 Executions and Counting: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Cruel Death Tally

[marmar]

200 Executions and Counting: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Cruel Death Tally

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2009.

Today marks the 200th execution under Perry, a record even deadlier than George W. Bush's tenure. What's the matter with Texas?



At roughly 6 p.m. tonight, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will make history when he presides over the 200th execution of his tenure. It's a chilling achievement, one that dwarfs that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who famously signed off on 152 (with a little help from his friend, then-legal counsel Alberto Gonzales).

Barring a most unlikely twist of fate, there's little doubt that Terry Lee Hankins will be dead by sunset. For death-penalty enthusiasts, this is cause for celebration; Hawkins -- a self-described "non-caring monster" who shot his wife and children in their sleep -- is held up as a poster child for state killing. One appellate prosecutor for the Texas Attorney General's office, Georgette Oden -- who recently joked on her blog that when asked at cocktail parties "So, what do you do?" she likes to boast "I kill people" -- wrote: "He's my best example of the kind of person who deserves the death penalty."

People like Oden would love to claim that all the people on death row are so cartoonishly deserving of death. But the past 25 years have painted a far more complicated picture, one that has shown the death penalty to be fraught with error, corruption, racism and prosecutorial misconduct.

Perry should know. His years in office have been marked by last-minute commutations, controversial executions and some 35 DNA exonerations of wrongfully convicted prisoners. In Harris County, which sends more prisoners to the death chamber than any other jurisdiction in the country, a scandal over its dilapidated and mismanaged forensics crime lab has provided an alarming backdrop to innocence claims by Texas prisoners, on death row or not. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/140398/200_executions_and_counting%3A_texas_gov._rick_perry%27s_cruel_death_tally

[pleah]

1. K&R The death penalty should be abolished. n/t

[spanone]

2. holy shit...200 state sanctioned murders? thank god we're civilized.