Ralph Blumenthal has, "Governor Commutes Sentence in Texas," in the New York Times. You'll also want to hear an audio report with Blumenthal at the NYT website.
The pardons board, appointed by the governor, met Wednesday and announced Thursday morning that it had voted 6 to 1 to recommend commutation. Shortly afterward, Mr. Perry, a Republican, accepted the recommendation.
“I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” the governor said in a statement.
Mr. Perry raised doubts about the law that allowed Mr. Foster and the triggerman to be tried together and urged the Legislature to re-examine the issue.
Three years ago the pardons board, with one vacancy, voted 5 to 1 to recommend commuting the death sentence of another convicted murderer, Kelsey Patterson, who had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mr. Perry turned down the recommendation, and Mr. Patterson was executed by lethal injection in May 2004.
The two earlier death row commutations by Mr. Perry at the pardons board’s request came this year and in 2004. In 2005, after the United States Supreme Court halted the execution of juveniles, he commuted the death sentences of 28 17-year-olds. But 163 other executions have gone forward under Mr. Perry.
The Los Angeles Times has, "Texas governor calls off execution."
The Republican governor did not address the Texas law that allows an accomplice to be given the death penalty, but said: "I am concerned about Texas law that allows capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously, and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine." Foster was tried alongside Mauriceo Brown, the man who actually murdered 25-year-old law student Michael LaHood Jr. and was executed last year.
Foster's scheduled execution Thursday, which would have been Texas' 403rd since the state renewed capital punishment in 1982, became an international cause celebre for death penalty opponents, who cheered the governor's decision.
Foster's family, which had nervously awaited word of his fate outside the Huntsville, Texas, prison where he was to be given a lethal injection, rejoiced.
"This was justice," said Foster's grandfather, Lawrence Foster. "There was no alternative for a rational human being to do anything other than what he did."
The Chicago Tribune carried an abbreviated version of the LAT story (both papers are owned by the Tribune), "Texas governor spares life."
The Guardian has, "Accomplice wins eleventh-hour reprieve from Texas death row."
The case has highlighted Texas's high level of execution, which remains far in excess of any other state. Foster would have been the third inmate to have been executed in three days.
The proceedings also cast a spotlight on the state's controversial "law of parties", a provision that allows for accomplices to be sentenced to death if they were conspiring to commit a felony, such as robbery, in which murder "should have been anticipated". Other states have similar laws, but rarely put them into practice.
Reuters has, "Texas governor commutes death sentence in rare act."
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