Death Penalty Update

I haven’t done one of these in a while because, to be quite honest, they depress me. There never seems to be any progress to report instead it’s a constant litany of bad news.

However, finally, from the quagmire called the Texas legal system, comes a rational decision. Miraculously the Texas Board of Paroles and Pardons recommended, and Governor Perry accepted, a commutation of the death sentence of Kenneth Foster seven hours before Foster was scheduled to die.

Seven hours mind you. Do you think they could have cut it any closer?

Foster was sentenced to death under the Texas Law of Parties. That law permits a person involved in a crime to be held accountable for the actions committed by someone else. In Foster’s case the district attorney maintained that he should have anticipated that his co-defendant, the actual killer, would exit the car Foster was driving and murder the victim.

I guess in Texas you’re expected to be clairvoyant. The very concept that someone can be convicted of murder because of something he should have anticipated, but apparently didn’t, strikes me as totally bizarre. I guess it struck Governor Perry that way as well.

So far this year there have been 38 executions, 23 of which have been in Texas. That brings the total number of executions since the death penalty was re-instated in 1976 to 1,095, of which 402 have been in Texas.

By region of the country, 897 have been in the South, 127 have been in the Midwest, 67 in the West and 4, all of so-called volunteers, in the Northeast. This statistic alone should tell you that the death penalty is arbitrary as hell.

Speaking of depressing, Pew Research has on its web site a summary of the positions of the leading presidential candidates from both parties on various issues. Unfortunately I have to report that all of them claim to favor the death penalty. I guess that will be the case until a majority of the voters are reported as being against it huh? Politicians are such weasels.