"Texas should overhaul death penalty laws, lawyer says," is the title of the AP report by Michael Graczyk, via the Austin American-Statesman.
The execution of a Texas man whose plea for DNA testing was ignored shows procedures and laws covering capital punishment need to be changed, a leading anti-death penalty lawyer said Friday.
Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck said the execution of convicted murderer Claude Jones 10 years ago took place only because then-Gov. George W. Bush wasn't told by his legal team that Jones' lawyer was seeking DNA testing on a piece of hair used to convict him.
"I have great hopes that when President Bush reviews this case he will acknowledge what I think is obvious here, and that is that he was blindsided, he was misled, and he would have granted that DNA test to Claude Jones and everything would have been different for Claude Jones."
Bush's office has declined to comment on the case.
Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Friday that Bush would typically ask two questions in execution cases.
"Did the defendant have full access to the courts, and was there any doubt about his or her innocence," said McClellan, who said he had no involvement in the Jones case.
Jones' execution was the 40th and last of the year 2000 in Texas — a record that still stands in the nation's busiest death penalty state. Earlier that year, Bush, who was running for president at the time, used his authority as governor to give another condemned inmate a 30-day reprieve for DNA testing. Those tests confirmed the evidence, and the prisoner was executed.
Scheck said that earlier decision from Bush convinced him the governor also would have stopped Jones' punishment if his staff had accurately told him about the DNA request. Documents obtained by attorneys working for the Innocence Project showed Bush was told Jones' guilt "is not in doubt" and that the prisoner had "full and fair access to judicial review of his case."
"We know that's not true," Scheck said.
The piece of hair was the only physical evidence prosecutors used to tie Jones to a fatal shooting during the robbery of an East Texas liquor store in November 1989. Because the DNA test showed the hair did not come from Jones, the evidence used to convict him was insufficient under Texas law, Scheck said.
The Houston Chronicle reports, "Questionable capital cases raise hopes for reform," by Allan Turner and Mike Tolson.
It was, at the very least, an odd political sight: former Texas Gov. Mark White, who had sent almost a score of killers to their executions, rubbing shoulders with New York lawyer Barry Scheck at a downtown press conference.
Scheck is co-director of the Innocence Project, an organization whose goal is to free the incarcerated innocent — and to achieve at least a temporary halt to executions in the United States.
Uniting these unlikely allies was this week's revelation through DNA testing that key evidence that led to the execution of career criminal Claude Jones for a 1989 San Jacinto County robbery-murder was faulty.
White, who insists he never sent an innocent man to his death, termed the events leading to Jones' 2000 execution "every governor's worst horror," and called on the coming Legislature to implement wide-ranging changes in the way courts and governors handle death cases.
Foes of capital punishment believe the cases of Jones, executed after then-Gov. George Bush was given an incomplete report about the career criminal's request for a stay, and Cameron Willingham, who was executed in 2004 on the basis of flawed investigations of a Corsicana house fire in which his three children died, will galvanize legislators and the public to demand reform.
Adding fuel to incipient anti-death penalty fervor, they believe, is the recent case of Anthony Graves, who was exonerated after spending 18 years on death row for a Brenham-area murder he did not commit.
"It's just mind-boggling," said Houston state Sen. Rodney Ellis, who as acting governor oversaw three executions while Bush was on the presidential campaign trail.
Ellis is optimistic that legislators will enact "common-sense reforms" to improve eyewitness identification procedures, record interrogations and provide more money for indigent defense programs.
"All people are imperfect," said Rick Halperin, director of Southern Methodist University's Embrey Human Rights Program, "and the systems that people design are imperfect. There is no such thing as a perfect criminal justice system."
While capital punishment reform is "frustratingly slow," he acknowledged, "Texas in 2010 is vastly different than it was in 1990. As people become better educated, we have this evolving standard of decency."
Five years ago, Texas offered capital juries the option of assessing convicted killers life without parole.
Major Texas newspapers, including the rock-ribbed conservative Dallas Morning News, have weighed in against capital punishment. Significantly, prosecutors have moved away from seeking death sentences.
This year, Harris County prosecutors sought - and juries awarded - death in just two cases.
Rob Owen, director of the University of Texas' capital punishment clinic, agreed with Halperin.
"There's inevitably more public skepticism about a system that has produced these highly publicized mistakes," Owen said.
The Jones case was the latest in a series that have raised questions about capital punishment.
At Daily Kos, MeteorBlades posts, "Executing the Innocent."
"Unbelievable" that they failed to inform the governor in this matter? "Lapses"? Obscenely predictable is more like it. Perfectly believable given Texas's long record of fighting against appeals in which defense attorneys actually fell asleep in trials in which their clients were convicted and sentenced to death. This is, after all, the third instance this year in which someone convicted of a capital crime in Texas was discovered to have been wrongly executed, very likely to have been wrongly executed, or exonerated and freed.
Commenting last month on the latter case, Gov. Rick Perry said it just goes to show the system is working.
Scheck has to be diplomatic in his public statements, and he certainly was in his response to Perry's claims:
“Each of these exonerations, particularly when someone’s on death row, are very important learning moments on how to figure out what went wrong and change the system,” Scheck said. “If the conclusion you reach is that a near miss like this means that the system is working, then you don’t understand the problems with the system. It’s sticking your head in the sand.”
The governor's head is stuck somewhere light does not penetrate all right, but it's not in the sand.
Earlier coverage begins with this post. Dave Mann's exclusive first report is, "DNA Tests Undermine Evidence in Texas Execution: New results show Claude Jones was put to death on flawed evidence."
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