Of the 1,000 executions in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the ultimate punishment in 1976, 150 were carried out in Texas on the watch of then-Gov. George W. Bush. He said back in 2000 that he was “confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts.” Never mind the tales of the lousy defense lawyers that some of the condemned have had, and the mounting fears that a San Antonio man named Ruben Cantu was wrongly executed in 1993.
You have to wonder why more conservatives and Americans generally don’t view this issue as columnist George Will does. Here’s what he said on Sunday’s “This Week”: “The death penalty is a government program in that it’s apt to be not done very well.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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8 Comments
1,000 executions, and you zero in on 15% of them. To be expected, I guess. Everything bad that has ever happened is the direct and personal fault of GW. Let the Bush bashing fest continue..*sigh*.
Nope..I am not saying he is great, wonderful, perfect, etc. But sheeesh…do you people EVER find anything wrong that you don’t blame on him?
Ray Thomas,
The singling out of W on this issue, I believe, is warranted. His record and his words have earned him the honor of being the poster boy for capital punishment.
Yes, Texas IS a large state. But this doesn’t explain why it has overseen the largest number of executions, since it is 13th in the country in violent crime and 17th in murders per 100,000 citizens (as of the 2000 census).
Think about it: W presided over 150 executions. That’s 150 death warrants he signed. No other governor is even close.
The other facet of my claim has to do with his well-documented glee at denying Karla Fay Tucker’s request for clemency. Sister Helen Prejean wrote the following in “Death in Texas,” which appeared in the New York Times Review of Books, Vol. 52, No. 1, January 13, 2005:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670
“In his autobiography, Bush claimed that the pending execution of Karla Faye Tucker “felt like a huge piece of concrete…crushing me.” But in an unguarded moment in 1999 while traveling during the presidential campaign, Bush revealed his true feelings to the journalist Tucker Carlson. Bush mentioned Karla Faye Tucker, who had been executed the previous year, and told Carlson that in the weeks immediately before the execution, Bianca Jagger and other protesters had come to Austin to plead for clemency for her. Carlson asked Bush if he had met with any of the petitioners and was surprised when Bush whipped around, stared at him, and snapped, “No, I didn’t meet with any of them.” Carlson, who until that moment had admired Bush, said that Bush’s curt response made him feel as if he had just asked “the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed.” Bush went on to tell him that he had also refused to meet Larry King when he came to Texas to interview Tucker but had watched the interview on television. King, Bush said, asked Tucker difficult questions, such as “What would you say to Governor Bush?”
What did Tucker answer? Carlson asked.
“Please,” Bush whimpered, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “please, don’t kill me.”
Carlson was shocked. He couldn’t believe Bush’s callousness and reasoned that his cruel mimicry of the woman whose death he had authorized must have been sparked by anger over Karla Faye Tucker’s remarks during the King interviews. When King had asked her what she planned to ask Governor Bush, Karla Faye had said she thought that if Bush approved her execution, he would be succumbing to election-year pressure from pro–death penalty voters.”
So, Ray, yeah, I think Rhonda wasn’t being gratuitous in connecting W to the issue of capital punishment.
I had no empathy for Karla Faye Tucker, the media made her out to be some sort of saintly victim. If she didn’t want to die, then she shouldn’t have killed that couple. How many times did she stab the woman? I think her death was a lot less painful than the death she dealt her victim. Karla Faye was at peace when she died and was convinced she was going to heaven, I’d say that’s a better deal than spending her life inside a prison. Why should Bush have given her anymore attention than anyone else on death row?
CF–
All I am saying is that it is not GW’s doing, acting in a vacuum. The state of Texas endorses the death penalty. Each of those warrants GW signed was the result of trials, penalty phases, and automatic review by the state supreme court.
If you are going to indict someone, you must indict the majority of people living in Texas.
And everyone should keep up the effort to have Gary Kleypas put down. If you know the facts of the case you’d agree that death is a light sentence for this guy.
Yeah, you can put Kleypas or Marsh down like dogs. But I’d rather they live and be forced every day to remember what they’d done.
And don’t forget Anthony Porter, an innocent man, who, thanks to some tenacious students, escaped death by 11 days.
Ray, as governor, W. held the record for executions on his watch–and still does. I trust you’ll at least think about it.
Rage, the problem I have with that (letting Gary live), is that he probably enjoys remembering this crime.He was a convicted and paroled killer when he killed again. Thoughts of his previous offense either did not deter or may have even been fuel for another offense.
Ray Thomas,
I agree with you, to a point. Yes, it is clear that the State of Texas is a bloodthirsty, angry god that requires fresh human meat periodically from time to time. The laws of Texas reflect this fact, which preceded W’s governorship and has succeeded it as well. So you’re clearly right that majority sentiment favors the death penalty.
However, in the link above, it is also clear that on a number of occasions, W refused to consider evidence that hadn’t been seen by the original juries. This is one of the stipulations under which a Governor may decide to commute a sentence. However, on other occasions, most notably in the case of Henry Lee Lucas, W did invoke evidence that hadn’t been seen by the original jury.
So while you’re right that W was administering decisions made by juries and courts, when it comes to pardons, on some occasions he decided against exercising his power to examine possibly exculpatory evidence. To this extent, lives were in his hands, and his decisions did proceed as if ‘in a vacuum.’