Pay Texas and be executed by Rick Perry - Rick's Macho Politics -Rick Perry Confederate Secessionist.
College Democrats at Texas State University -
Rick Perry: The presidential candidate dogged by a ghost? -
By Casey -
June 18, 2011 -
Rick Perry: The presidential candidate dogged by a ghost?
Some excerpts :
Texas Gov. Rick Perry may want to run for president. So let me reintroduce you a former constituent of his, Cameron Todd Willingham
Perry, who may soon announce his presidential bid, oversaw the 2004 execution of Willingham, a father of three convicted for the apparent arson murder of his young daughters. Problem was, the evidence used to prove Willingham set the fire that killed his children was based on shoddy science and obsolete investigation techniques, facts that were brought to Perry’s attention before Willingham’s death. Declaring his innocence to the end, Willingham was executed 12 years after his children’s deaths.
The New Yorker published a lengthy piece in 2009 detailing the whole affair, a depressing portrayal of a government more interested in self-preservation than in serving justice. Most chilling was the Texas justice system’s seeming indifference to condemned killers the moment they land on death row. Here’s a disturbing excerpt:
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Perry denied Willingham a stay of execution, an action that may have been forgivable in retrospect had the governor expressed a sincere desire to review the facts of the case given the overwhelming post-execution evidence that Texas made an irreversible mistake. On the contrary, Perry frustrated an investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, replacing three of its members days before the board was set to discuss a report that cast serious doubt on the evidence used to send Willingham to the lethal injection gurney. The meeting was canceled.
The Times wrote two editorials expressing dismay Willingham’s execution and Perry’s obstruction of the investigation. Still, the case faded from the national discussion and Perry went on in 2010 to win his third full term as governor.
Texas executes far more people than any other state, so it’s understandable that Lone Star State Republicans would give their governor a pass. But a Perry candidacy might prod conservatives in less execution-friendly states (such as, say, New Hampshire, which last knotted a noose in 1939) to answer for his apparent indifference to profound injustice.
Texas let Perry off the hook; the rest of the nation may not be so forgiving.
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