The San Antonio Current is having problems getting to read the file of Kenneth Foster from the Bexar County District Clerk’s office.
Losing the case, literally
The object of the Queque’s ire this week is three-fold, and we’ll start with the Bexar County District Clerk’s Office by way of Kenneth Foster, innocent man on death row.
Regular Questers know that on August 30 the state plans to administer the lethal injection to Foster, an inmate from San Antonio who didn’t actually murder anyone. Foster was convicted under the archaic “law of parties” for being in the same car, 80 feet away, from the guy who did shoot the son of a prominent local attorney. So far, the Austin American-Statesman has called for the governor to commute Foster’s sentence, as has local blogger Sean-Paul Kelley, who names the victim as one of his best friends. Even Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, dispatched a reporter to interview Foster, who’s still waiting for a visit from his hometown daily, the Express-News. In an interview two weeks ago, the Queque told Foster not to hold his breath; the daily, we’ve heard, has yet to replace their death-penalty reporter Maro Robbins, who departed last month to study law.
Even if they do set a last-minute newshound on the hunt, they’re going to run into the same paper-trail obstacle the Queque faced at District Clerk Margaret Montemayor’s office. The Queque filed a request to view Foster’s case file a month ago, and we’ve yet to set our paws on it, despite the 10-day maximum wait. What’s the hold-up? According to an assistant clerk in the criminal-records department, the archives department misplaced Foster’s file and is currently checking each and every storage shelf to find it.
