That's the title of Andrew Cohen's post at the Atlantic, subtitled, "Rick Perry's Death Penalty Calendar. The governor has the authority to stay three pending executions so that the courts can be sure of the prisoners' guilt. But will he?"
Here's the beginning of this must-read:
Whether or not he was an innocent man, whether or not the nation's justice system failed him, Cameron Todd Willingham is dead, as dead as Julius Caesar. He was executed way back on February 17, 2004, and there's nothing Texas Governor Rick Perry can do about it now. The same goes for Humberto Leal Garcia, the Mexican national executed in Texas on July 7th despite the earnest protestations of the Justice Department, Mexico's government and the United Nations. Nothing Gov. Perry can do now will bring Garcia back either.
But the leading Republican candidate for president, the governor who has authorized more executions than any other governor in the history of the United States, more even than his infamous predecessor, has the opportunity in the next ten days to do right by a death row inmate named Duane Edward Buck, who is very much among the living, at least for now. Gov. Perry also soon may have to confront the controversial case of another condemned Texas inmate, a man named Larry Ray Swearingen, whose execution is now on hold pending a new court review of important scientific evidence in his case. And the same goes for convicted triple-murderer Hank Skinner, a condemned inmate who has a November execution date despite a pending federal court case over a requested DNA test.
Political analysts seem divided over whether Gov. Perry's pronounced zeal for capital punishment will help or hurt him on the national stage. Just this past weekend, for example, Juana Summers at Politico wrote a piece suggesting that the death penalty won't be a big deal for Perry (or anyone else) on the campaign trail leading up to the 2012 election. That may or may not be true at the surface level of political theater. But either way it doesn't mean that the candidate's upcoming decisions on capital punishment, placed properly into the context of Texas' long and notorious history with the death penalty, aren't a vital topic to explore now that Labor Day has come and gone.
A roundup of coverage examining Rick Perry and the Texas death penalty is at the link. Earlier coverage of the cases of Duane Buck, Hank Skinner, and Larry Swearingen is also linked.
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