That's the title of an article in today's New York Times written by Deborah Sontag. It begins with an account of the case of Kelsey Patterson, a severely mentally-ill individual executed in 2004. The Board of Pardons and Paroles had recommended a commutation of his sentence, which was rejected by Governor Perry. The article includes extensive coverage of Mr. Patterson's case. It's a must-read, if only for those portions.
To critics here, Mr. Perry’s denial of a rare offer of mercy by his board indicates that he is excessively zealous about what he has called “the ultimate justice in the state of Texas.”
But Mr. Perry’s record on criminal justice is more mixed than his tough stance on the death penalty might suggest, partly because of changes in the political and legal climate over his three terms as governor.
Death sentences and average yearly executions have declined during his tenure compared with that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. And persistent efforts to fix Texas’s troubled justice system have finally borne some fruit. Mr. Perry has not been a crusader, but he has signed reform-minded legislation and acknowledged some of the system’s mistakes, once referring to an exonerated prisoner’s murder conviction as a “great miscarriage of justice.”
And:
To some here, Mr. Perry’s championing of the death penalty seems crystallized by his 2001 veto of a bill banning the execution of the mentally retarded and by his refusal to stay the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 after a last-minute report from an arson expert cast doubt on his guilt in his three daughters’ deaths in a house fire.
After that execution, Mr. Perry did not impede the Legislature’s creation of a commission to strengthen the state’s use of forensic science. But he did intervene in the commission’s investigation of the Willingham case, replacing its chairman, a defense lawyer, with a prosecutor who derailed the inquiry for over a year.
At the same time, though, Mr. Perry was signing bills to create a life without parole alternative to the death sentence, punish hate crimes more harshly, improve criminal defense for the poor, guarantee a right to post-conviction DNA testing, upgrade the use of eyewitness identifications and award generous compensation to exonerated prisoners.
State Senator Rodney Ellis, a Democrat who has led the push for criminal justice changes, said the governor should not be given too much credit for declining to veto legislation. “We’ve had to work against the grain to get that stuff passed,” he said.
On the parole board’s recommendation, Mr. Perry pardoned 35 people arrested in a tainted drug sting in Tulia and posthumously pardoned Timothy Cole, who was wrongfully convicted of rape and died in prison of an asthma attack. He also lobbied for significant compensation for a man who was exonerated after 18 years in prison for murders he did not commit.
Earlier coverage of Rick Perry, the death penalty in Texas, and 2012 politics begins at the link.
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