RODNEY REED: INNOCENT ON TEXAS DEATH ROW!
Gather with Rodney’s family and friends for and evening of solidarity and struggle.
WITH AUSTIN BAND DIASPORIC!
Starting with a march through Bastrop, followed by music & spoken word, and ending with a screening of the documentary State vs Reed. With food and drink.
NEW TRIAL NOW! NO EXECUTION!
IN BASTROP, TEXAS
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13TH
STARTING AT 3 PM
KERR COMMUNITY PARK
AT MLK AND WALNUT
From Austin take I-35 South and take Hwy 71 East toward Bastrop. About 25 miles. Take the Hasler/Childers and Loop 150 exit. Take a left at the second light (Loop 150). Go through downtown Bastrop and after you cross the railroad tracks, take a right on Martin Luther King. Go one block and take a right on Walnut to park.
SPONSORED BY THE CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY
For more info contact 512-494-0667 or cedpaustin@gmail.com
www.freerodneyreed.org
myspace.com/cedpaustin
Somebody should buy Texas Defender Service some new computers and a heart for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The New York Times:
The stay for the Texas execution was issued two days after the court did not stop Texas from executing another inmate, Michael Richard, leading to some confusion about its intentions.
Lawyers in the case on Tuesday said their appeal had been turned down because of an unusual series of procedural problems.
Professor Dow said the computers crashed at the Texas Defender Service in Houston while lawyers were rewriting his appeal to take advantage of the high court’s unexpected interest in lethal injection.
Because of the resulting delay, the lawyers missed by 20 minutes the 5 p.m. filing deadline at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, where the appeal had to go first before moving to the Supreme Court.
The Texas court refused their pleas to remain open for the extra minutes. Because the lawyers missed that crucial step, Professor Dow said, the Supreme Court had to turn down the appeal, and Mr. Richard was executed.
The Austin AMERICAN-STATESMAN:
Why did the U.S. Supreme Court halt the execution of one Texas inmate Thursday while allowing another prisoner, who presented the same arguments against lethal injection, to die two days earlier?
Defense lawyers blamed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which refused requests to stay open after 5 p.m. Tuesday, stopping a key appeal from being filed on behalf of Michael Richard. Richard, convicted of raping and killing a Harris County mother of seven in 1986, was executed later that night.
TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICEMichael Richard His appeal wasn’t filed to court by 5 p.m.
“It’s an inexcusable failure,” said Andrea Keilen, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represented Richard. “To close at 5 when the execution is scheduled for 6 p.m.? We need to have access to the courts.”
Abel Acosta, chief deputy clerk for the court, said it is longstanding policy for the court to close on time. “The clerk’s office consulted with the court, and we were advised that our hours are 8 to 5,” he said.
Keilen said the extra time was needed to respond to Tuesday morning’s news that the Supreme Court accepted a Kentucky case challenging lethal injections as cruel and unusual punishment.
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, is calling for a halt to executions in Texas. In 2001, Whitmire voted for a moratorium in committee and he called for a limited moratorium a few years ago on cases having to do with the HPD crime lab. When we approached him about a moratorium last summer to ask him if he would appear at a press conference with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell his aide told us that a moratorium “does not necessarily reflect his position at this time.” Now, he is back to calling for a moratorium. We ask that he clarifies his call to support a moratorium to say that it should last long enough for the Legislature to create a capital punishment study commission that would conduct a comprehensive examination of the entire death penalty system in Texas. The commission’s work could be completed within two years.
If there is a de facto moratorium on executions in Texas until the Supreme Court issues its ruling on the constitutionality of lethal injection, then Texas should use this time to examine the entire system, especially the risk of executing an innocent person.
According to the Houston Chronicle:
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Perry should issue a moratorium because the Supreme Court likely will grant a stay in every Texas execution until the Kentucky case is decided.
Whitmire noted that Perry, until overturned by the Legislature, attempted to use his executive order power to require teenage girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease.
“If he can tell a state agency to vaccinate people, I think he can tell a state agency not to execute people,” Whitmire said.
From a Reuters report:
“I think the signal from the Supreme Court last night is that we will have a moratorium until the Kentucky litigation is resolved. It is essentially a de facto moratorium,” said Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
“I think most jurisdictions will put executions on hold in any case and in Texas I think the Supreme Court is withdrawing the option. I think the political actors in Texas regrettably lack the restraint to allow the federal litigation to run its course,” he said.
The Houston Chronicle wrote an editorial this week that contains several sentences that seem to be moving the paper’s position more into the end the death penalty camp. The editorial endorsed suspending executions pending the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Baze, but it seemed to have larger concerns as well. Earlier this year, the Dallas Morning News changed its policy and endorsed abolishing the death penalty. The Houston Chronicle has not done that yet, but a close reading of their latest editorial on the subject could lead someone to think they are trying out some abolition arguments.
“There are several good reasons to give every death row inmate an indefinite reprieve. This week the U.S. Supreme Court found another.”
That sentence seems to imply that the lethal injection method is not the only reason to support a moratorium on executions.
“Particularly in Texas, the nation’s execution leader, the criminal justice system is prone to mistakes and abuse. The system is too unreliable in its assessment of guilt to justify exacting the ultimate, irrevocable penalty.”
Those two sentences are clearly abolitionist in sentiment.
Maybe sometime in the near future the Chronicle will stop dancing around the issue and say exactly what it means.
- Texas Moratorium Network (TMN) is a non-profit organization with the primary goal of mobilizing statewide support for a moratorium on executions in Texas. Significant death penalty reform in Texas, including a moratorium on executions, is a viable goal if the public is educated on the death penalty system and is encouraged to contact their elected representatives to urge passage of moratorium legislation.
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