[lbo-talk] History made in texas (death sentence commuted)

[J. Tyler]

Texas made history tonight.  Its governor, Rick Perry, of all people, granted the first contested commutation in the modern era of the Texas death penalty to Kenneth Foster, who had been scheduled to be executed tonight.  Foster never actually ever killed anybody.  He was convicted under Texas's law of parties in which a person is held criminally responsible for the actions of another.  (The person who actually committed the murder has already been executed.)

Only two other commutations have ever been granted in Texas in the modern era, both times at the State's request.  Henry Lee Lucas's sentence was commuted, despite being a serial killer, because it was shown he hadn't committed the murder he was sentenced to death for, and Robert Smith's sentence was commuted when the State's expert itself determined he was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for execution under the Eighth Amendment.

As minor an event as it may seem in the grand scheme of things, it is actually a great advance against the politics of death in Texas.

See: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5095416.html