WHO: Texas Moratorium Network
WHAT: “It Came From Austin!!!!” – A Benefit for Texas Moratorium Network and the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign
WHEN: Saturday July 28, 2007 – 8:00 PM
WHERE: The Scoot Inn, 1308 E. 4th, Austin TX 78702 www.eastinns.com
ADMISSION: $5-$10 sliding scale, 21+

You should really come, if you are in Austin. It will be great fun! The bands
are varied and very popular.

If you don’t live in Austin or can’t come, you can also donate online to the benefit through paypal or through the TMN website’s regular
donation page.

You can also send a check made out to TMN, 3616 Far West Blvd,
Suite 117, Box 251, Austin, Tx, 78731. Thank you for your help!

Fifty percent of tonight’s donations go to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign.

Backward Texas law may make man pay with life for deed he didn’t do
EDITORIAL BOARD
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
Saturday, July 28, 2007

Kenneth Foster didn’t commit murder. But that won’t stop the State of Texas from executing the Austin native Aug. 30.

It was Mauriceo Brown who shot and killed Michael LaHood in San Antonio 12 years ago — not Foster. Even the prosecution agrees that Foster was 85 feet away from the murder scene. But because of the Texas Law of Parties, that simply does not matter.

Under the 33-year-old law of parties, a person can be held responsible for a crime committed by someone else. According to the law, Foster “should have anticipated” that Brown would commit murder.

Though the law has its supporters, the application in the Foster case highlights flaws.

Only a few states have a law of parties as severe as Texas and no other state applies it as frequently to capital murder cases as Texas. About 80 inmates are on death row awaiting execution under the law of parties. They may not have done the actual killing, but they were along for the ride.

In a case similar to Foster’s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment “does not allow the death penalty for a person who is a minor participant in a felony and does not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill.”

New testimony shows Foster didn’t play a major role in the shooting that took the life of LaHood on Aug. 14, 1996.

In the original trial, Foster’s court-appointed lawyer failed to bring up key points that might have vindicated Foster. The same lawyer submitted a 20-page appellate brief in the Foster case — laughably short for a death penalty case. The lawyer also failed to pursue key testimony.

When Keith Hampton, an Austin lawyer skilled in criminal appellate work, took over Foster’s case, he remembers thinking, “Wait a minute, this guy is on death row?” He uncovered new testimony that ultimately won a stay in Foster’s case. Unfortunately, the ruling was overturned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Foster was no angel. He and three other men in the car — Brown, Julius Steen and Dwayne Dillard — had committed two armed robberies earlier that night. But the new testimony from Steen and Dillard shows that the men had no role in planning or carrying out a murder.

According to Steen and Dillard, Foster repeatedly pleaded with them and Brown, while in the car, to return home before they encountered LaHood. He also tried to drive away when he heard the gunshots, but Steen and Dillard made him stop and wait for Brown, who was executed for his part in the crime last year.

With a month left until Foster’s scheduled execution, his supporters are left with two options: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals must rule in favor of Foster, or the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles must recommend commuting Foster’s sentence. If the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends commutation, Gov. Rick Perry decides Foster’s fate.

Considering Perry’s track record on commuting executions, it is unlikely that Perry will decide in favor of Foster, even though he should.

Neither the governor nor the Court of Criminal Appeals should allow the state to execute a man for a crime someone else committed. Foster should be punished for his part in the robberies. But the state shouldn’t take his life for failing to anticipate that his friend would commit murder.

Watch this 3-minute preview clip from “Freedom to Live: The Death Penalty” part of Season Two of The Freedom Files.

The clip features, among others, Jeanette Popp, whose daughter was murdered in Austin. Jeanette met with her daughter’s killer when he was in Travis County’s jail and begged him to accept a life in prison sentence because her daughter opposed the death penalty, as does Jeanette.

In “Freedom to Live: The Death Penalty,” the compelling stories of people personally affected by the U.S.’s death penalty system offer a unique window into the system’s unfairness and inhumanity. Their firsthand accounts show how the system executes people for crimes they did not commit, and sends mentally ill people who can’t even recall their crimes to their deaths. They also reveal a system that burdens the poor with abysmal legal counsel, deprives prisoners forever of an opportunity for redemption and reformation, and does nothing to help survivors in their healing process.

Today, Lonnie Johnson became the 100th person executed after being given a death sentence by a Harris County jury. The total for Harris County is more than any other state except Texas, where Johnson would be 398th convicted killer to receive lethal injection since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982. The state with the second highest number of executions is Virgina with 98.

So far in 2007, 19 people have been executed in Texas. Oklahoma, Ohio and Indiana have each had two executions in 2007. Six other states have executed one person each.

Despite the enormous number of executions in Texas compared to other states, the national anti-death penalty leadership continues to send major funding to fight the death penalty in states that do not even have the death penalty, such as Wisconsin and Iowa, which received $50,000 and $20,000 from the Tides Death Penalty Mobilization Fund in late 2006. In 2007, Wisconsin and Iowa continue not to have the death penalty.

Meanwhile Judge Carven Angel of Florida’s Circuit Court has ordered a halt to executions because of concerns that the state’s new lethal injection protocols do not adequately address problems exposed in the state’s last execution. The new protocols were created after Florida’s botched execution of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The execution took more than 30 minutes after two tries, and then-governor Jeb Bush ordered a review of the process. Judge Angel’s oral order to stop executions came on Sunday, July 22, after he abruptly shut down a week-long hearing in which defense attorneys for Ian Lightbourne and dozens of other clients on death row were challenging the new protocols.