"Perry should ensure Skinner evidence is tested," is the title of a San Antonio Express-News editorial.
The Texas Legislature this year passed, and Gov. Perry signed into a law, a measure making it easier for convicted individuals to request DNA testing that might prove their innocence. Perry should halt the Skinner execution until the evidence has been tested.
DNA testing has exonerated more than three dozen Texans accused of serious crimes over the last decade. The latest case occurred last month, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals cleared Michael Morton of the 1986 murder of his wife. Untested evidence in the case identified the actual perpetrator as a suspect in another murder case, but not before Morton spent 25 years behind bars.
Morton is eligible for restitution from the state — $80,000 for each year of confinement. If Skinner is put to death tomorrow, there's no opportunity to right a terrible wrong.
It is unconscionable that Texas would put someone to death when evidence that might prove to be exculpatory sits untested. Yet that almost happened to Skinner in March 2010. Then, Perry refused to grant a reprieve, but the U.S. Supreme Court intervened to halt the execution.
In the subsequent 20 months, the state has had ample time to test the evidence in the Skinner case. Instead, it has continued a costly and obscene legal battle to fight testing that might confirm Skinner's guilt or might prevent Texas from making a horrific, irreversible mistake.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has saved Perry from having to issue a reprieve. But now that the court has acted and with Perry under the national scrutiny of a presidential campaign, the governor should ensure that the state follows the law and finally submits the evidence in the Skinner case for forensic testing.
Mark Osler posts, "Texas prosecutors won't stop rush to execution," at CNN. Osler is a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas Law School and a former federal prosecutor.
As the nation and the world's attention turned to the impending execution of Hank Skinner in Texas before a late stay by a Texas court, one question seemed paramount: "Why the rush?" The answer to that question is buried deep inside the psychology of prosecutors and the culture of Texas.
And:
Even the foreperson of the convicting jury has now stepped forward to ask that the tests be conducted. However, the prosecutors have steadfastly refused to allow such testing, and Skinner's attorneys have failed (thus far) to get a court order requiring those tests.
The prosecutors have been adamant about an immediate execution, precluding further tests, and it is this fact that many people find baffling. As a former prosecutor who then spent 10 years training future prosecutors in Texas, I am not surprised by this development. Quite simply, the prosecutors are committed to their conviction in a way that should surprise no one.
To a prosecutor, convicting dangerous people and incapacitating them is a life's work, nothing less than their duty to a community. Prosecutors have wide discretion in choosing whom to charge with capital murder and whether to seek the death penalty for the person they have charged.
Once they have chosen that path, though, it is a somber commitment: It is nothing less than a public pledge to kill another person, and that is the kind of thing that is not done lightly. There is a deep emotional component to it, and that emotional commitment cannot be ignored, especially when it no longer matches the trajectory of justice.
Academics such as Susan Bandes and Ellen Yaroshefsky have studied the emotional overcommitment of prosecutors, and explain it in part by looking to peer groups. Throughout the post-conviction process, prosecutors are usually surrounded by people (such as supervisors and investigators) who share their commitment to a conviction. At the same time, ethical rules keep them away from the person with the highest stake in the game, the defendant, who may want to challenge the outcome.
"The Texas D.A.s Who Denied Hank Skinner Justice," is David Protess's latest writing on the case at Huffington Post. Here's the beginning of this must-read:
The saga of Hank Skinner's fight for DNA testing, and for his life, reads like a Russian novel. Yesterday's chapter concluded with a stay of execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Texas high court agreed to decide whether a new state DNA law applies to Skinner's case -- or if he should be executed without the tests.
The stay is temporary. This war is far from over.
So how did we get to this point? Why has it taken more than a decade with still no outcome in sight?
The public controversy started, of all places, on Nancy Grace in June of 2000, and its resolution has been thwarted by four Texas Republican District Attorneys.
Earlier coverage of Hank Skinner's case begins at the link.
Comments