"Forget the messenger, focus on the flaws in criminal justice system," is the title of today's Austin American-Statesman editorial.
We won't argue the merits of Green's capital murder case. But Green raises legitimate issues in his pretrial motion challenging the Texas justice system's fairness.
Texas needs a thorough review of its capital punishment system, which should include recommendations — and if necessary — legislation to fix the well-documented flaws that cause the wrong people to be punished. Texas leads the nation in the number of people — 40 and counting — released from prison for crimes they did not commit. Nationwide, 139 people have been exonerated from death row. Twelve of them were in Texas.
Commissions to study the criminal justice system and identify its flaws have been convened on more than one occasion, with the latest one set up in 2009 by the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry. That was the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions. But the effort has yet to result in meaningful fixes to the system.
That commission was named for Cole, a military veteran and Texas Tech student who was wrongfully convicted of rape and imprisoned. The 1985 conviction was based in part on the victim's faulty identification and botched evidence from police. Years later, after the statute of limitations expired for the crime, the true rapist confessed.
And:
Some certainly will dismiss Green's challenge as a desperate attempt by an alleged killer to change the topic. Green might be a tainted messenger, but it's in everyone's interest to make the criminal justice system better — for those who support the death penalty as well as those who oppose it. Justice is not served in cases in which an innocent person is sent to prison while the true criminal goes unpunished, remains at large and, in many cases, continues to commit crimes.
That is neither moral nor just. The victim of a crime is again traumatized when he or she learns that the wrong person was sent to prison. The true criminal walks. And those who have been wrongfully imprisoned are forever scarred — if they are fortunate enough to survive.
"Death penalty on trial," is the Houston Chronicle editorial from the Sunday edition.
A challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty as practiced in Texas unfolds in a hearing in state District Judge Kevin Fine's court tomorrow. It's a fitting venue, since Texas has been by far the leading practitioner of capital punishment since its reinstatement in the United States in the '70s, and for years Harris County was the leading source of convictions. Approximately a third of the 316 inmates currently awaiting execution come from here.
The case that prompted the hearing is that of 25-year-old John Edward Green, charged in a 2008 robbery-killing in southwest Houston. Nine months ago Judge Fine, one of a wave of Democratic jurists who broke the all-Republican hold on Harris County district courts two years ago, issued a controversial ruling that the Texas death penalty was unconstitutional because of procedural flaws. After an ensuing furor from county law enforcement officials, Judge Fine backtracked, rescinding his ruling but setting the stage for an in-depth examination of capital punishment practices in the Lone Star state.
The challenge crafted by Green's attorneys, John P. Keirnan, Robert K. Loper and Richard Burr, is notable in that it does not claim capital punishment is unconstitutional, only that the slipshod and inequitable imposition of it in Texas violates Eighth Amendment protections. Their pleading argues that "capital punishment schemes that create a 'substantial risk' that innocent people are wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death are constitutionally unacceptable."
Since 1976, 464 people have been executed in Texas. During the same period, 11 inmates sentenced to death have been exonerated and freed. Most recently, Anthony Graves was freed after spending 18 years in prison, many of those years on death row, for robbery-murders he did not commit. While defenders of the death penalty argue that such exonerations prove the system works, Green's attorneys contend that luck plays the largest role in helping the innocent escape execution. Some inmates get competent appeals attorneys pro bono. In Graves' case, volunteers from the University of St. Thomas and the University of Houston worked with the Innocence Project to prove his innocence.
And:
It's clear that the Texas capital punishment system is horribly flawed and carries an unacceptably high likelihood that innocent people have been and will be executed for crimes they did not commit. We look forward to the proceedings in Judge Fine's courtroom as a vital step in identifying the problems and crafting safeguards to prevent the ultimate miscarriage of justice."
Earlier coverage begins with the preceding post. More on the Tim Cole Panel's work at the link.
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