We received a response today to the Public Information Act request that we submitted to Governor Perry asking what happened to the two letters that were left for him by the families of Carlos De Luna and Cameron Todd Willingham at the governor’s mansion on the day of the 7th Annual March to Stop Executions. The response from Governor Perry’s office said the two letters were received and sent to the constituent services office. We also requested that they send us any responses that Perry had sent to the families, but they said that no response had been sent. At least, we know that they received the letters and didn’t just throw them in the trash. They are now part of the historical record at the Texas Governor’s office.

Here is a previous post about the delivery:

Choking back tears and accompanied by 300 supporters standing outside the gates of the Texas Governor’s Mansion, the sister of Carlos De Luna delivered a letter to Gov Perry on October 28, 2006 asking him to stop executions and investigate the case of her brother to determine if he was wrongfully executed. Mary Arredondo slipped the letter, along with a copy of an article from the Chicago Tribune that concluded that her brother was innocent, through the bars of the front gate of the mansion and left it lying on the walkway leading to the front door of the mansion. A DPS trooper on duty refused to take the letter, so Mary left it on the walkway. The action was part of the 7th Annual March to Stop Executions.

The 300 supporters standing beside Mary Arredondo carried signs saying, “THE DEATH PENALTY SYSTEM IS BROKEN” on the top of the signs and different slogans at the bottom listing various problems with the Texas death penalty system that can lead to innocent people being executed, including “NO STATEWIDE PUBLIC DEFENDER SERVICE”, “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”, “NO INDEPENDENT COMMISSION TO REVIEW THE SYSTEM” and other problems.

After delivering the letter, Mary joined the crowd in a march to Austin City Hall for a rally against the death penalty.

The Honorable Rick Perry
Governor of Texas
Austin, Texas

October 28, 2006

Dear Governor Perry,

My name is Mary Arredondo. Carlos De Luna was my brother. He was an innocent person executed by Texas on December 7, 1989. I have come to the Texas Governor’s Mansion today to personally deliver this letter to you. It is too late to save my brother’s life, but it is not too late to take steps to prevent other innocent people from being executed. I am writing to ask that you provide the leadership to make sure that Texas never executes another innocent person.

My brother claimed his innocence from the time of his arrest until his execution. He named another man as the real killer. The Chicago Tribune has recently published the results of their investigation that concluded that my brother was the victim of a case of mistaken identity and the most likely killer was a man named Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez’s relatives and friends have recounted how he repeatedly bragged that my brother went to Death Row for a murder Hernandez committed. I am enclosing a copy of the Tribune article for you to read.

Please look into my brother’s case and ask the District Attorney in Corpus Christi to reopen the investigation into the crime for which my brother was wrongfully executed.

I also ask you to support a moratorium on executions and to create a special blue ribbon commission to study the administration of the death penalty in Texas in order to prevent other innocent people from being executed and to propose reforms to ensure the fair and accurate administration of the death penalty in Texas. In addition, I ask you to support an Innocence Commission that would be charged with investigating claims of innocence from people before they are executed and cases of people that have been wrongfully executed, as well as cases of innocent people who have been exonerated in order to determine what went wrong in the system that resulted in an innocent person being convicted.

There are other reforms that will help prevent innocent people from being convicted and executed, such as establishing a statewide Office of Public Defenders for Capital Cases and increasing the amount of money paid to attorneys representing indigent defendants and the amount of money available to them to conduct investigations. Of course, the best way to prevent innocent people from being executed is to end the use of the death penalty and instead sentence people convicted of capital crimes to life without the possibility of parole.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope that you will do whatever is necessary to prevent other innocent people from suffering the fate of my brother.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Arredondo

The Honorable Rick Perry
Governor of Texas
Austin, Texas

October 28, 2006

Dear Governor Perry,

We are the family of Cameron Todd Willingham. Our names are Eugenia Willingham, Trina Willingham Quinton and Joshua Easley. Todd was an innocent person executed by Texas on February 17, 2004. We have come to Austin today from Ardmore, Oklahoma to stand outside the Texas Governor’s Mansion and attempt to deliver this letter to you in person, because we want to make sure that you know about Todd’s innocence and to urge you to stop executions in Texas and determine why innocent people are being executed in Texas.

Todd was not the only innocent person who has been executed in Texas. There have been reports in the media that Ruben Cantu and Carlos De Luna were also innocent people who were executed in Texas. It is too late to save Todd’s life or the lives of Ruben Cantu or Carlos De Luna, but it is not too late to save other innocent people from being executed. We are here today to urge you to be the leader that Texas needs in order to make sure that Texas never executes another innocent person. There is a crisis in Texas regarding the death penalty and we ask you to address the crisis. Because the public can no longer be certain that Texas is not executing innocent people, we urge you to stop all executions.

Strapped to a gurney in Texas’ death chamber, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, our son/uncle, Todd Willingham, declared his innocence one last time, saying “I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do.” Todd is now dead and can no longer speak for himself, so we have come to Austin to speak for him.

Before Todd’s execution, you were given a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction, but you did not stop the execution. The author of the report, Gerald Hurst, has said, “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.”

Another report issued in 2006 by a panel of national arson experts brought together by the Innocence Project concluded that the fire that killed Todd’s three daughters was an accident. The report says that Todd’s case is very similar to the case of Ernest Willis, who was convicted of arson murder and sentenced to death in 1987. Willis served 17 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2004 – the same year Todd was executed. The report says that neither of the fires which Todd and Ernest Willis were convicted of setting were arson. The report notes that the evidence and forensic analysis in the Willingham and Willis cases “were the same,” and that “each and every one” of the forensic interpretations that state experts made in both men’s trials have been proven scientifically invalid. In other words, Todd was executed based on “junk science”.

Please look into our son/uncle’s case and ask the District Attorney in Corsicana to reopen the investigation into the crime for which my brother was wrongfully executed. You should also establish an Innocence Commission in the next session of the Texas Legislature that could investigate my brother’s case, as well as other cases of possible wrongful executions, such as Ruben Cantu and Carlos De Luna.

Please ensure that no other family suffers the tragedy of seeing one of their loved ones wrongfully executed. Please enact a moratorium on executions and create a special blue ribbon commission to study the administration of the death penalty in Texas. Texas also needs a statewide Office of Public Defenders for Capital Cases. Such an office will go a long way towards preventing innocent people from being executed. A moratorium will ensure that no other innocent people are executed while the system is being studied and reforms implemented.

We look forward to hearing from you and we pledge to work with you to ensure that executions of innocent people are stopped.

Yours sincerely,

Eugenia Willingham
Stepmother of Cameron Todd Willingham who raised him from the age of 13 months

Trina Willingham Quinton
Niece of Cameron Todd Willingham

Joshua Easley
Nephew of Cameron Todd Willingham

We had a conference call tonight with the groups that work on the annual March to Stop Executions and decided unanimously to hold next year’s “8th Annual March to Stop Executions” in Houston instead of Austin where it has been the last seven years. More people have been executed from Houston than any other city in the U.S. If Harris County, which contains Houston, were a state, it would rank third behind Texas and Virginia in number of executions.

The date for next year’s march in Houston is October 27, 2007, which is the last weekend in October.

Dave Maass of the San Antonio Current writes in this week’s edition about Andy Kahan’s assault on people exercising their freedom of speech on MySpace.

Is No Myspace Sacred?

Houston’s victims-rights official appoints himself morality sheriff, deputizes FOX News to run death-row activists out of e-town.

It ain’t easy being against the death penalty. The Governor-writing, the cross-country journeys, the heartbreak and frustration, and threatening phone calls – all just to keep a human being alive. Now anti-death-penalty activists are facing the threat of their own deletion from the system.

By system, I mean Myspace.com, the social-networking site that has added a whole new layer of communication and interconnection to modern society. Two months ago, Andy Kahan, the Houston Mayor’s director of Crime-Victim Services, logged on to Myspace to hunt for villains. He struck gold: Myspace hosted profiles and blogs supposedly for serial killers Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, mass murderers Charles Manson and his female disciples Squeaky Fromme and Susan Atkins.

… click here to read the entire article

Myspace’s official response to Kahan and FOX’s demands was “Unless you violate the terms of service or break the law, we don’t step in the middle of free expression. There’s a lot on our site we don’t approve of in terms of taste or ideas, but it’s not our role to be censors.”

Kahan’s not going to give up. It took two years to beat eBay, he said. He told FOX he’d consider lobbying for legislation.

That may not be necessary. FOX’s parent company, News Corp., bought Myspace.com for $580 million in July 2005, and this week the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, gave in to pressure to cancel a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson to promote his kinda-confessional, If I Did It. Of course, in O.J.’s case, it wasn’t news so much as it was promotion and profit, since he would’ve been interviewed by his publisher at ReganBooks, an imprint of FOX’s sister publishing house, HarperCollins. Murdoch also cancelled the book’s publication.

For me, as a journalist, there’s another issue at stake. In the last year I have used Myspace as a first point of contact in about one-third of my articles, especially those involving the friends and family of death-row inmates. If Kahan’s successful, it will not only sever a vital communication link, it will set an unacceptable precedent. My concern is there will be nothing to stop Kahan from harassing internet providers until they ban anti-death-penalty websites, and it will encourage other self-appointed morality police to petition Myspace to censor anything else controversial.

The Austin American-Statesman had a couple of good ideas this month. They published an editorial saying Texas should abolish the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and another editorial saying Texas should create a statewide office of public defenders for capital murder cases, saying “there should be bipartisan concern over Texas’ broken system. Proper writs eliminate doubt regarding a defendant’s guilt and can free those who are innocent. That is not happening in many instances for Texas death row inmates.”

They argued that the CCA should be abolished and its caseload transferred to the Texas Supreme Court, because the CCA “has failed in its obligation to ensure that the condemned received competent legal help.” Other reasons to get rid of the CCA:

Generally, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court is widely respected. But the Court of Criminal Appeals — also composed of nine elected GOP judges — has embarrassed the state with a series of bad rulings, many of them regarding the death penalty. Recently, the conservative leaning U.S. Supreme Court signaled its frustration with Texas’ criminal appeals court when it agreed to hear three Texas death penalty cases in its next term.

By now, many Texans know about some of the rulings that made national news, including the infamous sleeping lawyer case. In that case, the criminal appeals court judges saw nothing wrong with a defense lawyer who slept through key portions of his client’s capital murder trial.

The same court said OK to prosecutors who hid evidence from defense lawyers in several capital murder cases involving indigent defendants.

And it gave thumbs up to racial gerrymandering of a jury by Dallas prosecutors years ago in another capital murder case.

This week, we learned about more disturbing practices that probably are costing people their lives. For years, the court has permitted lawyers to submit sloppy, erroneous and inferior work in death penalty appeals. In a system in which almost anything passes as a writ of habeas corpus to appeal a death sentence, it is very possible that innocent people have been — and will be — put to death.

Rumor has it that a legislator is planning to file a bill that if passed would create a statewide office of public offenders, but so far we have not yet heard of anyone planning any legislation to abolish the Court of Criminal Appeals, but filing of new bills has only just begun.

Marybeth Rivas, whom we met in-person for the first time at the recent 7th Annual March to Stop Executions, sent us this article written by George Rivas about his life on death row.

Sleep is a luxury here and is not often found in more than a couple of hour blocks at a time. I am used to this though. When I first entered the”system” through General Population, or GP as it’s termed, I learned quickly to condition myself to less sleep and guarded sleep. The doors were open most of the time, like you see in the movies, therefore, at any time you could be killed in your sleep…it happens.

It’s safer, in that respect, here on death row. The doors are always closed, believe me, and they are solid steel. There are slots in them for meals to be passd through, our handcuffs to be put on and taken off, and for guards to look in and check on us whenever they want to. They are also a blessing at times because it allows us to yell through them to other inmates in the area. Solitude can be overwhelming, especially when living in a place the size of a closet.. It can get to some, sometimes enough to push them over the edge. But it’s those same steel doors that make sleep, here on death row, next to impossible. They, and all doors seperating sections, are on an electrical track. The slamming open and closed of these steel doors literally cause the walls to shake and the noise it creates can only be compared to as what you would hear in a dungeon.

I awake everyday about 2:30 am. Actually, I’m awoken by the slamming of the steel doors that the guards walk through on their rounds. I’m used to it. Can’t fall back to sleep, and besides, chow will be served in about half an hour, so no use trying.

I am thinking of my wife and our great visit last night. She looked beautiful (as always), and I smile as I think of her in those jeans. More, I pray and thank the Lord for her…

Soon chow rolls around. It’s a big cart that can feed a large number of us before it returns to the kitchen to refill. Chances are, food will not be warm coming off of it. Most of us have “hot pots” that we reheat our food in. Today it’s stale pancakes again, so I only get the milk. I’ll save it for later in the day though, to put in my coffee. Maybe I can fall back to sleep, I think and lay back down. No, it’s useless now. I’d fallen asleep around 11:30 pm, so I really need the zzz’s. Oh, well…

I doze off around 6 am, but showers are run about that time on Sundays, since there is no recreation being run today. When they come to your door, you go then or you do not go. I wring out my towel–which I’d left soaking in detergent for the night– and get ready for my shower. Like I said, you get one chance and only one chance to go. The guards open the small slot in my door and I turn around, then bend down to have the’cuffs put on. The door is opened and I am taken to the shower. The process is repeated to take the ‘cuffs off (slot in the steel shower door too) and I take a 10 minute shower. We do not choose our shower temperature, it’s been scolding hot and it’s been freezing cold before, but today it feels good. Going through the handcuffing routine again, I am brought back to my cell.

I listen to the radio, which I’m thankful to have. It keeps me connected to the world outside through news, music, and I love to listen to daily sermons. Alot of people think we have t.v.’s in here and computers, that just isn’t so. There are many here who cannot afford a radio and like I said before, solitude can be overwhelming. After I listen for a bit, I then begin my morning prayers, but I’m tired, so I don’t read any Scriptures this morning. My wife is spending the night in town, so we’ll see each other again tomorrow (Monday) before she drives the 4-plus hours drive back to her family’s home. It’s pretty tough on her, but she never complains. My heart goes out to her, more than I can ever express in words…
I wonder if she can feel the love-thoughts I’m sending her way this morning? I’m looking at her picture as I begin to nod off.

Lunch shows up about an hour later, and I’m pretty groggy as I get my tray– bean burritos with beans, rice, and corn. I pray over it and begin to eat. The corn tastes sour? A neighbor upstairs begins to holler at the guards that the food is spoiled. Great. I’m just about done eating (not the corn though), and I just shake my head. Several other people yell out the same thing, so a sargent eventually shows up to see what the problem is. Typically, he just smells the food then says he’ll go talk to the kitchen boss, and get back to us. No holding my breath! I’m brushing my teeth when he returns to say that the boss said there was nothing wrong with the food. Bull. As groggy as I was when I ate, even I could tell that there was something wrong. But, none of them care. If it means more work, i.e.; having to refeed the whole pod (84 inmates), they’ll just ignore us and whatever our problems are. I expected it, especially with this particular sargent, so after cleaning up, I just lay down.

This time I do fall asleep, though the constant slamming of the steel doors keeps waking me, even though I ‘ve got ear plugs pressed deeply into my ears. But I am used to this too. There’s almost always someone yelling from one cell to another too. We are all living under the same shadow of death here. I never know if it will be the last time talking to a person because he may get a date before I’m moved near him again. I, and a handful of us, are moved every week to another cell. Often by the time I’m moved back in a certain area again, some will have been moved to the pod for people with dates for execution, but sometimes their already–Gone. On an execution day, we all share this heavyness that’s within us and in the air. We get to know a different side of each other that people out there do not get to see. We all have hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, the desire to live and the desire to die. Yes, you read that correctly. We all yearn to live, but sometimes the daily living conditions wears us out until there’s no fight left

I’m awoken again at last chow ( you call it “supper” or “dinner”), but I’m not feeling too well, so I refuse my tray. Just feeling bloated and my head feels hot. I pray that I’m not ill, and lay down for a bit more. I get up after a while and heat up some water for a cup of coffee. Then sit down to write a letter to my wife. I smile just thinking about her, and give thanks to the Lord again for her.

She’ll be here in the morning, so I’ve got to get some real rest, I don’t want her to see the circles under my eyes and end up worring for nothing. I don’t really want to tell her of the food poisoning, but she’ll find out anyways. I can’t keep secrets from her, as insignificant as they may be. She’s my soul-mate, so I won’t lie to her. I finish writing to her in the middle of the night, brush my teeth, then lay it down for the night. It’s after 1 am, so I’m going to try and get a couple of hours in before chow shows up at 3 am (more or less). I’ll probably doze off praying when they show up with breakfast. I hope it’s not pancakes again, cuz I’m kinda hungry now.

I guess it’s been a good day… no fires were started (they cause smoke) and no one near me was gassed. Both the smoke and the gas can fill your cell even though it’s not your fire or your not the one being gassed. How? Those little slots in the steel doors that I said was sometimes a blessing, well this would be an instance when they aren’t. When the gas or smoke fills your cell you have two repreives. One, soak a towel with water and wring it out, then put it over your face, or two, if it’s real bad, place the wet towel over your head with your head down in the toilet (yep, you always want to keep your toilet clean; it doubles as your clothes washer too). When there are no gassings or smoke filling the pods, there’s a smell that difficult to explain. When I was captured and brought back into the “system” he first thing that ‘hit’ me was the smell. It’s a smell that I think could be described as a mixture of a hospital (cleaning supplies), basement (damp and musty), and some other smell that I can’t place. It’s just always there. One more thing that I hear that people think we have while in here is A/C. Nope.

And let me tell ya, it can reach 120* in the cell, on a hot day in summer, especially if your cell’s window, which are long, narrow slats of thick, unopenable glass, faces the sun. I use my fan. I use it alot.

I think I’ll be able to fall asleep now. And I smile as I drift off, because I know that my wife is nearby and I’ll see her sweet face in the morning. With that in mind, I drift off…

…I wake up at 2:30 am. The slamming of the steel doors has brought me out of a pleasent dream of my wife. We were kissing… sighs.
Oh, yeah. Pancakes again. Oh, well.

—George Rivas