Is it just me, or are the Republicans just getting more and more brazen every day? They are out of power, say and do whatever they want, and they know no one in the media is going to call them on it. I’m actually shocked CNN has this story up:
An investigation into claims that faulty evidence led Texas to execute a man in 2004 was at a “crucial point” when the state’s governor replaced three of its members this week, one of the three said Thursday.
Gov. Rick Perry’s shake-up of the Texas Forensic Science Commission came two days before it was to hear from the author of a scathing report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. That Friday session has been postponed indefinitely in the wake of Perry’s new appointments.
Willingham was put to death for killing his three daughters in a fire that arson investigators said had been deliberately set.
Yet death-penalty opponents say an impartial review of the case could lead to an unprecedented admission — that the state executed an innocent man.
Three reports, including one commissioned by the Forensic Science Commission, have concluded that arson was not the likely cause of the 1991 fire.
Perry’s office described the governor’s replacement of commission members as routine, saying the terms of Chairman Sam Bassett and commissioners Alan Levy and Aliece Watts had expired. But Levy said he told the governor’s office “that it would be disruptive to make the new appointments right now.”
“The commission was at a crucial point in the investigation,” he told CNN on Thursday.
Asked about the future of the Willingham investigation, he said, “I don’t know if it will ever be heard.”
I mean, if you are Rick Perry, why the hell not just do this? I mean, after all, the guy who was the HMFIC of the Tillman cover-up is now running the show in Afghanistan and playing political games in the media with the President, and no one seems to give a shit. So why not just do whatever you want? No one is going to make a stink about this except for some DFHer’s, and then the villagers can just point at them and wonder aloud if this will be a good time for Obama to have another Sister Souljah moment with the pinko commies.
And if they do even mention this, the very next thing out of the mouths of our media elites will be… Ricky Ray Rector.
Fulcanelli
Looks like Governor Good Hair decided to emulate ubercreep Tricky Dick Nixon and stage his own Saturday Night Massacre when it looked like the ugly mob was about to show up at the door.
Mr Furious
If KB Hutchinson decides to make hay out of this, it could be Perry’s undoing. But that’s an unknown, and would be the only price he’ll probably pay.
That’s not even a cover-up. It’s Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre.
Mr Furious
Damn you, Fulcanelli!
General Winfield Stuck
Ricky Ray Rector-self lobotomized- Yes I remember that well. The salient happening that pretty much described the situation.
Texas would execute it’s own mother if it had one.
Ash Can
This doesn’t really strike me as a case of increased chutzpah. It sounds more like SOP for Perry and his ilk.
Crust
This sounds tantamount to obstruction of justice.
licensed to kill time
I guess they just want to walk on by. Why should they bother their beautiful minds?
Dr. I. F. Stone
An interesting pile of nonsense buried within this silly post.
Fulcanelli
@Mr Furious: Condolences on the loss of your pup, Putty. A fine animal it seems, from the pix you put up. It soooo sucks to lose them.
Midnight Marauder
@Ash Can:
But I think given the context of all the malfeasance Republicans are drowning in, it does take a certain amount of chutzpah to pull a move like this. But hopefully, the move backfires and it brings increased scruitiny of Governor Good Hair and Co.
Zifnab
@Mr Furious: In the Republican Primary? Bwhahahahahaha! If Rick Perry exhumes the corpus, strings it up in front of a live audience, and shouts, “I’m glad we killed him, and I hope he burns in Hell!” he’ll get nothing but higher praise and more votes.
This is Texas. The state went loopy years ago.
thefncrow
Perry’s choice to replace the head of the committee makes this worse. It’s Williamson County DA John Bradley. You’d really have to dig to find a worse person to put in charge of the committee.
The one thing that always sticks out to me is this, where he suggests to a fellow prosecutor to use the plea bargain process to get an agreement to destroy the evidence in the case, in order to prevent any pesky future retesting of the evidence which might prove the defendant’s innocence.
Xanthippas
Yeah, sorry. We’re working on it.
– Texas Democrat
Fulcanelli
@Crust: This is Texas we’re talking about here. If somebody was killed, chances are justice was served, it seems. It doesn’t matter how, or by who.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m not sure Perry can stuff this genie back in the bottle.
Andre
@Fulcanelli:
Note that this rule does not apply to young white women.
scav
you are somehow left with the impression that, for their next trick, they will suggest doing away with the whole trial thingy as a cost-cutting anti-government measure in the great state of TX.
Dreggas
@Mr Furious: Never happen. Republicans are the uber pro-death penalty party and if Hutchison wants to stand a chance she’ll stay away from this.
Joey Maloney
On the subject of lawn order, have you seen this? (via S,N!)
(Not even gonna try blockquoting. Everything below this point is from the link.)
A conservative politician in Georgia is telling his hometown police force to stop looking for the union label, or find new jobs.
Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon’s police force if it votes to unionize.
The Macon Telegraph reported on Monday that some 130 police officers on the city’s municipal force want to unionize because of “officers bearing the burden of rising insurance costs, a loss of incentive pay and the city not having a pay scale.”
“Iām thinking Iāll have the City Attorney draft me legislation to dissolve the police department and contract with the Sheriff to provide public safety services,” Erickson wrote on the blog Peach Pundit.
“You didnāt read that incorrectly,” blogs Zaid Jilani. “Councilman Ericksonās response to the possibility of Maconās cops forming a labor union is to abolish the police department.”
Andre
@scav:
They’re getting there in Georgia. They’re aiming for the removal of the police force first.
Fulcanelli
@Andre: Good point, sir.
But Texas does seem to have an itch that killing people seems to scratch, especially where the law and morality is concerned.
Might this be due the pervasive influence of a fundamentalist Christianist belief system? And the darker the skin tone the more they need savin’ it seems. Sick.
scav
guardian is on it too Willingham capital case haunts Texas governor as state launches inquiry. Ignore the title, they seem to have lost all contact with their verb tenses, but still. The guard. also notes that millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms
Anne Laurie
@licensed to kill time:
Spin that out to 1800 words, and you’re a prime candidate for the Washington Post’s New
ApologistColumnist Op-Ed Contest!dmsilev
@Joey Maloney: That’s incredibly in character for Erik Erikovich.
Anyone want to bet, though, that if he needed to call the police for whatever, he’d be squealing like a stuck pig if the officers didn’t respond in 10 seconds flat?
-dms
Molly
@Xanthippas: “Yeah, sorry. Weāre working on it.”
Molly Ivins wrote this back in 2003. I use it when people want me to explain Texas Republicans to them. It helps. Sorry it’s so long…it’s worth it.
***************************************************
Here’s how we make progress in Texas. Two summers ago, Governor Goodhair Perry (the man has a head of hair every Texan can be proud of, regardless of party) appointed an Enron executive to the Public Utilities Commission. The next day, Governor Goodhair got a $25,000 check from Ken Lay. Some thought there might be a connection. The guv was forced to hold a press conference, at which he explained that the whole thing was “totally coincidental.” So that was a big relief.
We don’t have a sunshine law in Texas; it’s more like a partly cloudy law. But even here a major state appointee has to fill out a bunch of forms that are then public record. When the governor’s office put out the forms on the Enron guy, members of the press, that alert guardian watchdog of democracy, noticed that the question about any unfortunate involvement with law enforcement looked funny. The governor’s office had whited out the answers. A sophisticated cover-up.
The alert guardian watchdogs were on the trail. We soon uncovered a couple of minor traffic violations and the following item: While out hunting a few years earlier, the Enron guy accidentally shot a whooping crane. As a result he had to pay a $15,000 fine under what is known in Texas as the In Danger Species Act. We print this. A state full of sympathetic hunters reacted with, “Hell, anybody could accidentally shoot a whooper.” But the press stayed on the story and was able to report that the guy shot the whooper while on a goose hunt. Now the whooper is a large bird–runs up to five feet tall. The goose–short. Now we have a state full of hunters saying, “Hell, if this boy is too dumb to tell a whooper from a goose, maybe he shouldn’t be regulatin’ public utilities.”
He was forced to resign.
linda
pffft… as if texas gives a rat’s ass about justice:
The man almost took the dirty secret of his death to his grave. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office said injuries from a pickup wreck killed him. But after a funeral director hundreds of miles away found a bullet in the manās head, authorities realized a killer was on the loose.
Worse has happened in the autopsy suites of Texas medical examiners.
A child molester faked his own death and almost got away with it after the Travis County medical examiner mistook the burned body of an 81-year-old woman for the 23-year-old man.
A woman was on her way to Death Row in Alabama after a medical examiner now working in Texas said she had suffocated her newborn. The sad truth, other experts said, was that the baby was stillborn.
An Austin baby sitter has spent years on Death Row for a babyās murder. The medical examiner whose testimony helped put her there now says the babyās death may have been an accident.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/science/v-print/story/76131.html
Anne Laurie
@Joey Maloney: ā
And replace them with the Red State Trike Farce, no doubt.
Erickson’s just bitter his geeenyus has been insufficiently immortalized.
Sentient Puddle
@Dreggas: Her statement:
You ask me, the key part of that is “strongly for the death penalty.” Not just for. Strongly for!
I think she hopes that the primary voters tuned out after that qualifier, or something.
JohnR
It’s not just Texas. It’s the whole country. The Republicans still run things where it counts, even though they’re nominally out of power. It seems to make no difference who does what or who says what; unless it’s a GOP-approved thing, it vanishes in a couple days or so and things keep on going in the same direction. I used to wonder how certain ‘movements’ happened in history, but we’re living through one – it’s like trying to stop a slow locomotive or a rolling cannnball. The scattered media voices are piping up too late and too hesitantly to make any difference, I fear. I suspect that we passed the tipping point about 5 or 6 years ago.
ppcli
@General Winfield Stuck:
Texas would, no doubt. But Ricky Ray was killed by Arkansas – distinguished as one of the most cynical episodes in a Clintonian political career that featured many, many cynical episodes.
Jeff Berardi
“Sister Souljah moment” might be a good addition to the lexicon.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
John – read the New Yorker piece on the Willingham case. It can be found here.
kay
@Sentient Puddle:
Who exactly are the pro-death penalty constituency? The current Ohio AG is a death penalty promoter, and he’s a Democrat.
There’s a huge group of voters out there who are single issue voters on the death penalty, but they’re just really, really quiet?
I have never spoken to a single person who admitted voting based on being pro-death penalty, or even brought it up, and I’ve certainly heard from anti-abortion people, anti-gun reg people, flat tax people, etc.
This is one of those few issues where liberals (anti) have a smart, savvy, and LOUD organized presence, and the opposing side (pro) are mostly silent, and still we have politicians frightened to oppose this insanity.
Warren Terra
Also, from the comments at Mark Kleiman’s related post last night, commenter K notes:
I haven’t seen this aspect noted elsewhere, but (assuming it’s true) it’s an especially brazen aspect of the case and deserves to be noted.
General Winfield Stuck
@ppcli:
Yep, Clinton personally showed up, I think, to make sure everything went the way it was supposed to and he got to look tough on crime and big supporter of death penalty for the coming election in 92. That aside from Texas executing it’s own mother.
Mark S.
Erik Erikson is a fucking city councilman? Dear God.
Molly
@kay: “Thereās a huge group of voters out there who are single issue voters on the death penalty, but theyāre just really, really quiet?
I have never spoken to a single person who admitted voting based on being pro-death penalty, or even brought it up, and Iāve certainly heard from anti-abortion people, anti-gun reg people, flat tax people, etc.”
You see a few frothers around the execution chamber in Huntsville when an execution is happening, but you’re right. It’s one of those vapor issues.
Texas used to not have the sentencing option of life without parole, juries had to either kill people or risk them getting out. We added the sentence of life without possibility of parole as an option for juries in September 2005. Since then, the times the sentence of death is given have been cut in half.
I think most people here, honestly, don’t give a damn, they just don’t want the killers back on the streets. You’d have some holdouts, but now that we can sentence people to life in prison, you could repeal it here, there would be some bitching, some would get their panties in a knot, but no one is going to vote someone out for the sheer reason that they don’t support the death penalty.
Zifnab
@Just Some Fuckhead: The SCOTUS has been doggedly insisting that no one in modern history has ever been unjustly executed. How can you even set aside the absurdity of that statement? Might as well anoint the entire circuit court system as Popes because they’ve NEVER EVER EVER failed to spot an innocent man (when the crime was murder). Infalliblia!
If you can convince 1.2 billion Catholics that the guy in Rome is infallible, then Perry can stuff this genie back in the bottle and set him up along side all the others.
ds
“Thereās a huge group of voters out there who are single issue voters on the death penalty, but theyāre just really, really quiet?
I have never spoken to a single person who admitted voting based on being pro-death penalty, or even brought it up, and Iāve certainly heard from anti-abortion people, anti-gun reg people, flat tax people, etc.
This is one of those few issues where liberals (anti) have a smart, savvy, and LOUD organized presence, and the opposing side (pro) are mostly silent, and still we have politicians frightened to oppose this insanity.”
You’ve never been to California, have you?
The Democratic party here is pretty liberal, but on this particular issue they’re absolutely rabidly pro-death.
Back in 1992 Diane Feinstein’s campaign slogan literally was “She’s a Democrat for the death penalty, and she’s always fought for a woman’s right to choose.” (or something close to that)
Pro-choice, pro-death was sort of her catch phrase. It was basically a signal to voters that hates those lunatic conservatives as much as the next guy but she’s not some sort of dirty hippie either.
Even Barbara Boxer supports the death penalty.
The source of it is that for decades Republicans successfully painted Democrats as a bunch of soft-on-crime losers, so Democrats needed some sort of issue to prove they’re not.
Presenting themselves as a bunch of execution crazed maniacs unfortunately turned out to be a pretty good strategy. Feinstein got elected in a landslide.
Deschanel
Rick Perry’s cousin killed in shootout with the police, says Huffpo.
Christ. Staying away from Texas, Montana with their fake Serbian militia, and Arizona where you can bring guns into bars now. Thanks America, it’s been great.
ds
Now that I think about it, it got really crazy in the aftermath of Dukakis’s loss.
“Moderate” and “conservative” Democrats always mostly favored the death penalty. But after the 1988 election even liberal Democrats decided they weren’t going to be “Willie Horton”-ed anymore and started presenting themselves as gung-ho executioners.
The sentiment has died down with time, but major politicians are still timid about being outspokenly anti-death penalty.
thefncrow
@Warren Terra: It’s actually true, but there’s actually a good reason. Perry is required to wait for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association to recommend someone before he can name the defense attorney member.
This doesn’t let him off the hook for being a massive scumbag, but there’s a legit reason there.
Warren Terra
Thanks, thefncrow.
bobbo
Apparently only commie hippie death penalty opposers are capable of reviewing the facts of a case.
The Grand Panjandrum
Executing a few innocent folks in Texas just lets state residents know how serious they are about cracking down on crime.
A-Ron
@Xanthippas:
This should be the new Texas state motto.
SenyorDave
All that’s left is karma. But when you are completely amoral like Perry, can karma ever really catch up?
I do worry about anyone who has this POS as a role model.
trollhattan
@Mark S.
He’s probably only one of those things.
kay
@ds:
Well, yes, I have been to California. Twice. It was lovely. I liked Los Angeles a lot. My friends said, inexplicably, “you especially, will hate Los Angeles” but they were just very wrong.
I am surprised that death penalty grandstanding has such potent political power, though.
kay
@Molly:
I keep thinking of Illinois, the moratorium. I don’t remember any huge outcry. It just seems like a wacky single issue to hang your hat on, as a voter.
“I was going to vote for him, but then he wasn’t STRONG enough on the death penalty, so that was a deal breaker”. That happens?
I made canvassing calls for John Kerry and they gave me this long, long “issues sheet” and his position on the (federal) death penalty was on there, and I knew no one was ever going to ask that, and they didn’t.
Mr. Furious
Yeah, you guys are probably right about the KB Hutchinson-primary aspect. What was I thinking?
I guess I was thinking that an obvious and illegal cover-up of killing someone would be a serious disqualification for reelection. I neglected to account for the Texas Factor.
Tsulagi
@Molly:
Didnāt know that. Curious why that wasnāt an option until 2005. Not making that available seems like the state government was intentionally trying to steer juries toward the death penalty.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
See now this is why I favor building a border fence. Between New Mexico and Texas.
Jack
We’ve never really abolished human sacrifice. We just call it “the ultimate penalty” now. Same magical “thinking.” Same blood sorcery. Lots more hiding it and prettying it up with needles and ER studio sets.
But – tis not just Tejas. Here in New England, there are plenty of folks who think it’s just fine to invoke the gods of blood, sacrifice the scape’d goat, and murmur about the lawn order.
jibeaux
Do you know what this story seriously needs? A movie. If you read the New Yorker article, you know it’s already gripping and fascinating. You’ve got your villains now with the gubnor and the DA chair. Really, it would make a good movie and would really make people aware of the insanity of all this.
PTirebiter
From the Dallas Morning News
“Over the strenuous objections of District Attorney Craig Watkins, Dallas County commissioners voted Tuesday to hire an outside lawyer to advise them about an investigation they ordered into the activities of two constables. ”
The olā boys were not happy here in Dallas after we elected a Democrat as our new D.A. ā and that Watkins is an African American only added insult to injury. Watkins made no friends when he allowed 40 prisoner’s petitions for DNA tests to go forward. Tgjhe petitions had been been previously denied by his Republican predecessor. To date; nineteen prisoners (a number of whom are admitted Negroes) have been exonerated and released. Now our uppity D.A. has really pissed off the right wing good ol boys downtown. Watkins has suggested it would be inappropriate for his office to share details of an ongoing investigation into a couple of constables who are running for re-election and who just happen to be Democrats.
The estimated cost of their proposed illegal āindependentā counsel is 3 million bucks.
Good thing or public schools are all flush.
rā¬nato
I guess I’m going to annoy some people whom I like here… but Ricky Ray Rector is not exactly the best poster boy for abolition of the death penalty nor sparing the mentally impaired from it.
Rector was only mentally incompetent because he fucked up his suicide, AFTER committing two murders (and wounding two others) while fully mentally competent, including a cop who was supposedly his friend.
If somebody can tell me how to explain to friends and family why Clinton should have stepped in and spared this guy, I’m all ears.
General Winfield Stuck
@rā¬nato:
I don’t think it matters how he became mentally incapable of understanding what was happening to him. Nor does the brutality of his crimes make it ok. It is the fact that he wasn’t capable of grasping that he was about to be killed, and what is the point of punishing someone with death if they cannot grasp the full import of their punishment?. For a lot of people, this is an act of barbarism, and I am one of those people.
And sparing someone from death when they will spend the rest of their days in prison, is not sparing all that much, IMHO>
As for Clinton, it wasn’t so much that he didn’t intervene, it is the fact he made political hay out the mans execution.
J. Michael Neal
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I’ve always hoped that I lived far enough away that they couldn’t find their way here, until I realized that they could just follow I-35 like a trail of breadcrumbs. Now my only hope is that would-be Texas emigrants need to stop for gas and Cheetos somewhere in Missouri, and can’t find their way back to the entrance ramp.
Chad N Freude
@Molly: Every day, I mourn the loss of Molly Ivins.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Zifnab:
Ironically, the death penalty is one of the issues on which the Catholic Church takes a liberal position. No death penalty.
The SCOTUS is claiming infallibility on an issue that even the Pope doesn’t claim infallibility about.
bob h
The Republican contempt for science and reason on display.
Snarki, child of Loki
If it is proven that Texas executed an innocent man, then Texas is guilty of murder.
And should be executed.
No, not the people, not even the governor (as satisfying as that might be). the state.
No. More. Texas.
Sounds like a win-win to me.