Last Update: 10/28/2003

 Please select one of these sections

Once you are done with the above sections, you may choose another course by picking one of the options below

ECONOMIC POLICY <go back to the top>

Compassion Con credits total = 17

CIVIL RIGHTS <go back to the top>

Compassionate conservatism revealed in one of its worst best forms.

Compassion Con credits total = 27

#	Topic	Gov. Bush or his team's Compassionate statement	Some Uncompassionate Facts	Compassion Con Credits
CR1-01	Civil Rights/ Affirmative Action	Bush "..."In our state of Texas I worked with the Legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, to pass a law that says if you come in the top 10 percent of your high school class you're automatically admitted to one of our higher institutions of learning," Bush said, calling it "affirmative access."..."	Jake Tapper (Salon): "...In actuality, Democratic state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, the sponsor of that bill -- which Bush did, indeed, sign -- told Salon in August that he "developed that plan with the help of some university professors. And I passed it through the Senate. [Bush] never called me, he never wrote about it, he never had any press conferences to testify about the bill. So for him to take credit for it like it was his idea, that's just not right."..."	1
CR2-01	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty (Carla Fay Tucker and Betty Lou Beets)	Bush "..."Despite the call being sounded around the country and world, I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison." And shortly before Betty Lou Beets was executed last February, Bush's office issued a press release with this afterthought: "Note: Governor Bush does not have the independent authority to stop the execution of Betty Lou Beets." ..."	Alan Berlow (Salon) via P.L.A.: "...Beets was almost certainly guilty of murdering her fifth husband and burying him under a little wishing well at the front of her mobile home near Gun Barrel, Texas. But the evidence that Beets was not guilty of capital murder -- a murder that qualifies for a death sentence -- was stunning.  Beets' attorney, E. Ray Andrews (who later served a three-year federal prison sentence for soliciting a bribe while serving as district attorney in another murder case), never told the jury that Beets didn't even know about the insurance policy on her husband at the time he was murdered. She learned of it more than a year later thanks to Andrew himself. Why would an attorney withhold such critical evidence from a jury? Who knows. But Andrews had obtained the literary and movie rights to Beets' life story in lieu of payment for defending her. Had he revealed her ignorance of the insurance policy, he would have had to withdraw from the case and testify on her behalf. That would have also meant losing lucrative rights to Beets' story -- and, perhaps, a better ending for the movie...Beets' attorney failed to present evidence of a long history of sexual abuse, including her rape by her father when she was 5 years old, at the sentencing phase of the trial, which might have convinced a jury to impose a sentence other than death. Although the jury never heard this evidence, it was laid out for Bush in Beets' clemency appeal. Apparently, he was not impressed..." Alan Berlow (Salon): "...In February he signed off on the execution of Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old great-grandmother, despite evidence that strongly suggests her own attorney -- who secured literary and movie rights to her story, and later served a three-year federal prison sentence for extorting a bribe in another murder case -- gave her miserable representation. .....Under Texas law, Bush can only commute a death sentence if he receives a recommendation to do so from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Absent such a recommendation, Bush's legal authority is limited to granting a 30-day reprieve. ..In reality, no one honestly believes that Bush could not have stopped the execution of Tucker, Beets or any other death-row inmate had he seen fit to do so. "One of the myths in Texas is that the governor doesn't have any power," says David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston. "All the governor has to do is communicate his wishes to the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles who are, after all, his political appointees, and they will do exactly what he wants." Dow notes that in the one case where Bush commuted a death sentence to life in prison -- serial killer Henry Lee Lucas -- the governor made it clear what he thought and the board carried it out. .."	2
CR2-02	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty  (Carla Fay Tucker)	Bush [claimed] "...he had a "restless night" before the execution, "felt like a huge piece of concrete was crushing me" as he waited for Tucker to die, read a postmortem statement to the press which was "one of the hardest things I have ever done," and came away from the whole experience "heavy of heart."..."	Alan Berlow (The American Prospect): "...in an interview with Talk magazine...he mimicked Karla Faye Tucker--the first woman to be executed in Texas in more than 100 years--as she pleaded with him for her life..." Daily Howler: "...Of course, what was most interesting about this particular "revelation" was the way it appeared to contradict what Bush had told Tucker Carlson in an earlier interview for Talk. In his piece, Carlson said that Bush had ridiculed Tucker's request for a stay, even doing mocking impressions of her appearance on Larry King Live. There had been no talk of private agony..." Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...Why should Bush have been so tormented by assenting to Tucker's execution? According to the Bush standard for clemency, her case wasn't even worthy of consideration. Tucker didn't claim that she was innocent of murdering Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton with a three-foot-long pickax in 1983. She said that she had been treated fairly by the courts and deserved her punishment. What helps to explain Bush's concern, of course, is that Tucker's case was the most highly publicized of any during his tenure as governor. In prison Tucker had become a born-again Christian, like Bush. Her execution was opposed by, among others, one of Bush's daughters and a slew of otherwise ardent death-penalty supporters, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who became convinced that she was remorseful, repentant, and rehabilitated. Nevertheless, dozens of Texas death-row inmates could claim similar conversion experiences, remorse, and repentance; and dozens had compelling claims regarding innocence or due process..."	2
CR2-03	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty (Gary Graham)	Bush (on the case of Texas inmate Gary Graham) said, "...“Mr. Graham has had full and fair access to state and federal courts,” he said in a public statement that day, hours before the execution. “After considering all the facts, I’m confident justice is being done.”..." "...Bush had persistently voiced his faith in the judgments reached by the Texas system. “I analyze each case when it comes across my desk,” he said as Graham’s execution neared. “And as far as I’m concerned, there has not been one innocent person executed since I’ve been the governor.”..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative... ...On October 28, 1981, Mr. Gary Graham was found guilty of capital murder and later sentenced to death by a Harris County jury. The murder marked the beginning of a week-long crime rampage during which Mr. Graham committed at least 10 armed robberies. Two of his victims were shot, one was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint. Over the last 19 years, Mr. Graham’s case has been reviewed more than 20 times by state and federal courts. Thirty-three judges have heard and found his numerous claims to be without merit. In addition to the extensive due process provided Mr. Graham through the courts, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has thoroughly reviewed the record of this case as well as all new claims raised by Mr. Graham’s lawyers. Today the Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to allow Mr. Graham’s execution to go forward. I support the decision..."	Daily Howler: "...But regarding the murder of Lambert, the evidence against Graham was remarkably weak. No physical evidence linked Graham to the crime. There had been three eyewitnesses at the scene; two of them said that he wasn’t the killer. Indeed, it was on the testimony of a single eyewitness—who saw the killer for a fleeting moment across a dimly lit parking lot—that Graham was sitting on Texas’ death row, insisting that he was innocent. There was no other evidence... The evidence was remarkably weak, but something else made the case a matter of interest—the hapless defense which Graham had received. Texas had long been famous for the feckless way it conducted its capital cases, and Graham’s case was one of many in which an indigent defendant received an inept defense from a poorly qualified, court-appointed attorney. How had Graham been defended? At trial, Graham’s lawyer, Ronald Mock, failed to present the two eyewitnesses who said that he wasn’t the killer. He failed to present the ballistics evidence, which showed that Graham’s gun wasn’t the murder weapon. In an interview with the New York Times in June 2000, Mock, “acknowledged that he did almost no investigation of the case.” (For example, he never interviewed the two eyewitnesses, whose names appeared on the police report.) But this seemed to be the norm for Mock, who had been reprimanded several times for professional misconduct in death penalty cases. You couldn’t dream up a career like Mock’s. At one point, for example, Mock had been actually jailed during one murder case for misconduct he had committed in another. He was one of a string of sleeping, drunk and inept lawyers whom Texas routinely used in such trials... For Graham, Mock was only part of the story; he had also been stymied in his appeals. Graham finally gained diligent counsel in the early 1990s; his new lawyers attempted to present the testimony of the two eyewitnesses whom Mock had sleepily ignored. No dice. By the spring of 2000, several jurors who convicted Graham said that they would have favored acquittal if they had heard this evidence at trial. But because of procedural roadblocks in the Texas system, those witnesses had never been heard in any court. And that is when the genius Cornyn blundered out onto the scene.  Two witnesses said Graham wasn’t the killer; they had never been heard in any court. But as the day of execution drew near, Cornyn appeared on major TV shows, stating precisely the opposite. Incredibly, Cornyn asserted on Nightline that Texas judges had ruled, “in open court,” that the two eyewitnesses “had no credibility whatsoever.” On Nightline and again on Hardball, Cornyn persisted in his bogus statements even after being contradicted by parties who actually knew the facts. After several days of howling errors, Cornyn’s office was forced to acknowledge and withdraw his misstatements, making him the latest incompetent Texas official to leave his mark on the Graham case. And, adding to the air of total absurdity, it was Cornyn who, as attorney general, was advising Bush on the facts of the case! This Cornyn is the same brilliant fellow whom Texans have now sent to the Senate..."	1
CR2-04	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty (David Wayne Spence)	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Salon): "...Nevertheless, Bush signed off on at least one execution in which the condemned man had a compelling claim of innocence...Bush has never commented publicly on the 1997 execution of David Wayne Spence, but the case is worth examining both because Spence made a compelling claim of innocence, and because his case goes directly to the governor's role in the state's execution process...in the years following Spence's convictions, Spence's lawyers uncovered an astonishing body of potentially exculpatory evidence that had been withheld from the defendant's trial lawyers. Police investigative files discovered by Raoul Schonemann, who represented Spence post-conviction, from 1991 until his execution, showed that the state falsely informed the court that no other suspects had been identified by police. In fact, police records showed that although not one of the 20-odd Waco citizens who were at the lake on the night of the murders had mentioned seeing Spence or his co-defendants, they had identified several other potential suspects, among them one Terry Lee Harper, who the same police files showed had actually boasted about having committed the murders. Seven witnesses reported that Harper had told them of his involvement in the murders and no less than three said they had heard Harper make the statement before the murders were publicly reported on the radio. Harper also had a rap sheet listing 25 assaults, including several against teenagers at Lake Waco...There are other reasons to doubt Spence's guilt. Given the grisly nature of the murders, the multiple stab wounds and extensive loss of blood, one might have expected police to find some physical evidence from the assailants. Yet pubic and head hairs found on the victims' bodies matched neither Spence nor the state's other suspects. And the hairs were never tested against any of the other suspects identified in the police investigation. No hair sample was taken, for example, from Harper....[CG. - it goes on and on - please read the full article!]"	1
CR2-05	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty (Odell Barnes, Joseph Stanley Faulder, James Beathard, Andrew Cantu)	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." "...Bush has consistently maintained that he applies two standards in considering clemency appeals. One is evidence of innocence, the other whether a condemned prisoner had full access to the courts or due process..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Salon) via P.L.A.: "...But Beets is not the only case that calls those standards into doubt. Earlier this year, Bush approved the execution of Odell Barnes, whose court-appointed lawyers failed to interview witnesses who might have helped their client, and conducted no scientific investigation of blood and semen evidence the state said linked Barnes to the crime. (Texas is notorious for appointing poorly paid and unqualified lawyers in capital cases.) Last year the governor signed off on the execution of Canadian Joseph Stanley Faulder, convicted of murdering a wealthy oil heiress, despite the fact that the prosecutor had been hired and paid for by the victim's family, and that the state had withheld evidence that its principal witness was paid more than $10,000 to testify against Faulder. The state's chief psychiatric witness, whose testimony was essential to securing a death sentence, was later expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for presenting unprofessional testimony in Texas death penalty cases. Bush refused to stop the execution of James Beathard, whose co-defendant, Gene Hathorn Jr., recanted his testimony following Beathard's conviction and said he, not Beathard, had been solely responsible for the murder of three members of Hathorn's family. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to grant Beathard a new trial because state law requires that new evidence be presented within 30 days after a judgment is entered. Hathorn's recantation came 11 months too late. [CG: This is my emphasis. There are no words to express the horror of this.] Bush also failed to intercede last year on behalf of Andrew Cantu, who ended up representing himself after two lawyers assigned to his case withdrew and a third never even interviewed the defendant, claiming he didn't know where to find him. (He apparently didn't try death row.) Cantu was executed without either state or federal habeas corpus review of his claims. In 1997, Bush approved the execution of David Spence for the grisly stabbing deaths of three teenagers, despite evidence that Spence may have been framed by police and the lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime..."	4
CR2-06	Civil Rights / Death Penalty (David Wayne Stoker)	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." "...Bush has consistently maintained that he applies two standards in considering clemency appeals. One is evidence of innocence, the other whether a condemned prisoner had full access to the courts or due process..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...in at least two other capital cases profound doubts about guilt were raised by the defense but virtually ignored by Gonzales [Bush's legal counsel at that time]. In the case of David Wayne Stoker, for example, Gonzales devoted just eighteen sentences to the extraordinarily complex circumstances of the crime, leaving out essentially all the mitigating evidence and failing to address a multitude of questions about both the evidence against Stoker and his due-process rights. Ronnie Thompson, a key state witness, initially told the police, and then the court, that Stoker had confessed to a 1986 murder. But following Stoker's conviction Thompson recanted, explaining that he'd lied in court because the prosecutor had threatened to bring a perjury charge against him if he didn't stick to his original account. Bush should have been told that. During Stoker's trial, in 1987, Thompson's wife, Debbie, left him to move in with Carey Todd, the prosecution's chief witness; she got a piece of the Crime Stoppers reward that Todd received for naming Stoker. Gonzales failed to mention that drug and weapons charges against Todd were dropped the very day he testified against Stoker; and that Todd thus had an apparent motive for setting him up. Gonzales also failed to mention that a state investigator, a police officer, and Todd all lied in court about what Todd received for his testimony; that the jury wasn't told about Todd's possible motive for framing Stoker; and that James Grigson, a psychiatrist who testified that Stoker was a sociopath who would "absolutely" be violent again (thereby making him eligible for a death sentence), had never even examined Stoker. Grigson, whose expert testimony has helped send dozens of men to death row, earning him the nickname Dr. Death, had been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association two years before the Stoker case was reviewed by Gonzales and Bush, because his testimony had repeatedly been found to be unethical. Another expert medical witness against Stoker, Ralph Erdmann, had relinquished his medical license in 1994 after pleading no contest to seven felonies tied to falsified evidence and botched autopsies. A special prosecutor's investigation of Erdmann concluded that he falsified evidence in at least thirty cases, and that if "the prosecution theory was that death was caused by a Martian death ray then that was what Dr. Erdmann reported." All this information was in the public record, yet Gonzales mentioned none of it in his memorandum to Bush. Stephen Latimer, who represented Stoker in his clemency appeal, told me recently that he received a call from Gonzales's office about a week to ten days before the execution, advising him that there would be no reprieve. The timing is significant, because Gonzales's execution summary is dated June 16, 1997, the day of Stoker's execution. If that decision had been made a week or more before Bush even read the summary, it is fair to ask whether Bush was actually in the loop or—as many suspected—had simply made clear to both Gonzales and the BPP that he wasn't interested in commutations..."	1
CR2-07	Civil Rights / Death Penalty (Billy Conn Gardner)	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." "...Bush has consistently maintained that he applies two standards in considering clemency appeals. One is evidence of innocence, the other whether a condemned prisoner had full access to the courts or due process..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...Consider the case of Billy Conn Gardner, whose death-penalty case was plagued by issues of incompetent counsel, dubious witness testimony, and unheard mitigating evidence. Gonzales's report to Bush gave no sense of these circumstances. It matter-of-factly described the robbery of a high school cafeteria in Dallas, during which Gardner, wearing a stocking to obscure his face, allegedly shot and fatally wounded Thelma Row, sixty-four, a cafeteria worker. Also in the cafeteria at the time was Paula Sanders, a co-worker who had told her husband, Melvin, that several thousand dollars in daily cafeteria receipts were processed in a back room at the school. Melvin, who drove the getaway car, claimed that he had persuaded Gardner to participate. Paula, who knew Gardner, said that she could provide no description of the assailant, because her back was turned. Before Row died, however, she had been able to describe a man with a "bony face ... and a two-inch goatee." Gonzales didn't tell Bush that the state was unable to produce a single witness who recalled ever seeing Gardner with a goatee, or that two witnesses to the shooting—Carolyn Sims and the school custodian, Lester Matthews—described a man with reddish-blond hair, whereas Gardner's hair was black. Matthews nevertheless positively identified Gardner as the killer, and Gonzales accepted this testimony at face value—although Matthews didn't know Gardner, admitted to having seen the killer for only three or four seconds, and didn't actually identify him until his third police interview, three months after the crime. Also missing from Gonzales's memo were the facts that only after prosecutors threatened to bring other charges against Melvin Sanders did he finger Gardner as the murderer, and that in exchange for this testimony Sanders received complete immunity from prosecution for the murder and probation for pending forgery and firearms charges. The state also agreed not to prosecute Paula Sanders. Gonzales told Bush in his summary that Paula "testified that she was unaware of the robbery plans"; but he neglected to mention that she had received several phone calls only minutes before the robbery and shooting, and that according to Carolyn Sims (whose name is absent from Gonzales's report), she appeared "nervous and upset" after taking these calls. Sims was not deposed until years after the trial, during Gardner's habeas corpus appeal. More important, Gardner's lawyer never interviewed Paula Sanders and met with Gardner only once before jury selection, for fifteen minutes, raising an obvious suggestion of ineffective counsel—which Gonzales also dismissed with no discussion. The case is a disconcerting tangle of speculation and uncertainty. What Gonzales should have made clear to Bush during the clemency review is that the case involved many unanswered and troubling questions. Gardner was put to death on February 16, 1995..."	1
CR2-08	Civil Rights / Death Penalty (Carl Johnson, Irineo Tristan Montoya, Bruce Edwin Callins)	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." "...Bush has consistently maintained that he applies two standards in considering clemency appeals. One is evidence of innocence, the other whether a condemned prisoner had full access to the courts or due process..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...the Gonzales memoranda suggest that Gonzales was rarely, if ever, prompted to delve deeply into the cases he was reviewing for Bush. In his summary of the case of Carl Johnson, for example, dated September 18, 1995, the day before Johnson's execution, Gonzales failed to mention that Johnson's trial lawyer had literally slept through major portions of the jury selection. His memo on Irineo Tristan Montoya, dated June 18, 1997, the day of Montoya's execution, omits the single most important issue in the case: an alleged violation of international law, which had been brought to Bush's attention by, among others, the U.S. Department of State. His memo on Bruce Edwin Callins, dated May 21, 1997, the day of Callins's execution, fails to note that Callins's appeal to the Supreme Court generated the most famous death-penalty dissent in the past quarter century, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a longtime death-penalty supporter..."	3
CR2-09	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Salon): "...Not surprisingly, reporters immediately began wondering how many erroneous death sentences Bush would abide. Seven men have been released from Texas' death row in the past dozen years, including one under Bush, after courts determined that they had been wrongly condemned...The claim is questionable for a number of reasons, particularly since Bush has endorsed efforts that actually increase the likelihood that an innocent person will be condemned. Bush campaigned for and, once elected, signed into law an act designed to limit appeals by death-row inmates and speed up the time between sentencing and execution from an average of nine years to seven or less. The law would probably have resulted in the wrongful execution of the seven men released from the state's death row, had it been in effect during the previous 12 years, since all seven served more than seven years on death row before their release...Bush also vetoed legislation, unanimously approved by the Texas Legislature, that would have made modest improvements in the quality of attorneys provided to indigent defendants, despite the fact that the state has, by any objective measure, one of the worst systems of indigent criminal defense in the country (only three of the state's 254 counties have full-time public defender offices). ..Of the $153 million in federal criminal justice grants the state has received since Bush took office, not one penny has gone to indigent defense..." Compassiongate: Bush's words, "I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime" are by themselves very deceptive compassionate. Someone who commits a crime is by definition guilty! The point is whether one is sure he or she committed the crime in the first place.	3
CR2-10	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Salon) via P.L.A.: "...A major statistical study released Monday, which examines every death sentence handed down in the United States between 1973 and 1995 (5,760 sentences and 4,578 appeals), reveals that state and federal courts found serious, reversible error -- errors that undermined the reliability of the sentence -- in nearly seven out of every 10 capital cases (68 percent). Author James S. Liebman, a Columbia University law professor, concluded that such rampant error rates, which were found in nearly every state that handed down a death sentence, put large numbers of people at risk of wrongful execution. Fully 7 percent of those individuals whose cases were overturned were found to be not guilty of the capital crime. In Texas, reversible error was found in 52 percent of capital cases..."	1
CR2-11	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "...Shortly after Ryan's announcement, Bush dismissed any consideration of a moratorium on executions in Texas, insisting he is "confident that every case that has come across my desk -- I'm confident of the guilt of the person who committed the crime." ..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...More than anything else, the Tucker case illustrates how Bush sought to deny responsibility for executions. "I could not convert Karla Faye Tucker's sentence from death to life in prison [without the BPP]," Bush stated, citing Texas law. Gonzales made the same point in a letter to the papal nuncio in Washington, who before the BPP made its recommendation had written Bush on behalf of the Pope to solicit clemency for Tucker: "Ms. Tucker's sentence can only be commuted by the Governor if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends a commutation of sentence." Of course, Bush did intervene in the subsequent Lucas case before hearing from the BPP. Gonzales did not tell the papal nuncio that even after the BPP denied clemency the governor could have invoked a thirty-day reprieve to postpone this or any other execution. Bush didn't use this power because he had no interest in impeding the BPP, which was infamous for rubber-stamping executions. In a December 1998 district court hearing on a lawsuit brought by the death-row inmate Joseph Stanley Faulder (in whose trial a principal state witness was promised more than $10,000 by the prosecutor to testify), Judge Sam Sparks concluded, "It is abundantly clear the Texas clemency procedure is extremely poor and certainly minimal." Sparks found that "none of the members" of the BPP read clemency petitions in their entirety; that "a flip of the coin would be more merciful than these votes"; and that the board provided no rationale whatsoever for its clemency recommendations. "There is nothing," Sparks said during the hearing, "absolutely nothing that the Board of Pardons and Paroles does where any member of the public, including the governor, can find out why they did this."..."	1
CR2-12	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "..."Each case is major, because each case is life or death." In his autobiography he wrote, "I review every death penalty case thoroughly" and added, referring to his legal staff, "For every death penalty case, they brief me thoroughly, review the arguments made by the prosecution and the defense, raise any doubts or problems or questions." Bush always maintained that this review provided what he called a "fail-safe" method for ensuring due process and certainty of guilt..." "..."I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," he wrote in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep (1999), "unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair."..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas—a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by [Alberto] Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel. Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL...Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes. A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence... Gonzales's execution summaries belie [Bush's] assurances of thorough and judicious review. The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions..."	1
CR2-13	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "..."In every case," he wrote in A Charge to Keep, "I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And, have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case?"..." Bush "...Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative..."	Alan Berlow (Atlantic Monthly): "...This is an extraordinarily narrow notion of clemency review: it seems to leave little, if any, room to consider mental illness or incompetence, childhood physical or sexual abuse, remorse, rehabilitation, racial discrimination in jury selection, the competence of the legal defense, or disparities in sentences between co-defendants or among defendants convicted of similar crimes. Neither compassion nor "mercy," which the Supreme Court as far back as 1855 saw as central to the very idea of clemency, is acknowledged as being of any account. The record suggests that what Bush described in his autobiography as "a fair hearing and full access to the courts" meant in reality nothing more than that a case had received some sort of legal attention at all state and federal levels. In the case of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed in Texas in more than a hundred years, Bush wrote to at least two constituents that he had refused to grant a reprieve precisely because "the courts, including the United States Supreme Court," had "reviewed the legal issues in this case" and denied all appeals. But clemency is a political act, not a judicial one. By eliminating "legal issues" from executive consideration, Bush in effect refused to address what were often the condemned person's strongest claims. Indeed, the fact that courts have rejected a defendant's legal claims arguably places an added burden on a governor—as the conscience of the state and the literal court of last resort—to conduct a scrupulous review. This is especially true in Texas, where more than a third of executions in the United States since 1976 have occurred; where half of all capital cases are overturned on appeal because of errors during trial; where seven innocent men have been freed from death row, including one under Bush; where, according to The Dallas Morning News, nearly a quarter of the condemned were represented by attorneys who had been disciplined for professional misconduct; and where 30 percent of those executed under Bush between his inauguration in 1995 and June 11, 2000, according to the Chicago Tribune, were represented by attorneys who presented no mitigating evidence or only one witness during the sentencing phase of the trial. Given this environment, Gonzales's neglect of mitigating evidence in the clemency-review process is highly problematic..."	1
CR2-14	Civil Rights/ Death Penalty	Bush "...told reporters that Texas does not execute the mentally retarded..."	Amnesty International (via Carol Swinney): "...Amnesty International...released a letter sent to Governor George W. Bush yesterday...The letter calls on him to prevent the execution of a severely mentally disabled man, due to be carried out in Texas tomorrow evening...John Paul Penry, who has an IQ of between 50 and 63 and the mind of a seven-year-old child, is scheduled for lethal injection in Huntsville at 18:00 hours local time on 16 November. He was convicted in 1980 of the 1979 murder of Pamela Moseley Carpenter...Amnesty International has reminded Governor Bush that during presidential campaigning he mistakenly told reporters that Texas does not execute the mentally retarded, and the letter points out that several such individuals have been put to death in his state..."	1
CR3-01	Texas hate crimes bill	Bush "...about his stance on hate crimes legislation, saying that Texas had an effective hate crimes law...." (talking about hate crimes in the context of crimes against gays)	Human Rights Campaign: "...Although a weak penalty enhancement statute has been in place in the state since 1993, the measure does not cover sexual orientation. Bush opposed legislation introduced in 1998 that would strengthen existing Texas law and would also cover sexual orientation..." "..."Governor Bush owes the American public an explanation of why he opposes the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which he referred to as the Kennedy hate crimes bill," said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch. "He is being completely disingenuous when he says he supports hate crimes laws. When, in fact, even after being implored by the Byrd family to support a tougher law in the name of their slain relative in Texas, Governor Bush callously refused. Further, he said he opposes the Kennedy bill which has bipartisan support including strong backing by law enforcement, yet he supports a version by Senator Hatch that is far weaker and excludes coverage for sexual orientation."..." Eric Alterman (MSNBC/WLM page 172): "...Bush took credit in the same debate for a hate crimes bill that, as governor, he opposed..."	1
CR3-02	Hate crimes law	Bush "...argued that a stronger hate-crimes law was not needed in Texas because three men were facing the death penalty for the racially motivated murder of James Byrd, a black man dragged to his death behind a pickup truck. “It’s going to be hard to punish them any worse after they’re put to death,” Bush said, with an out-of-place smile across his face. .."	Sam Parry, Consortium News: "...But Bush wasn’t telling the truth. One of the three killers actually had received life imprisonment, not the death penalty. Bush had misstated or exaggerated the facts of a major criminal case that had occurred during his tenure as Texas governor. One could only imagine how the press would have played up a similar mistake by Gore. It would have been all the voters would have heard about for a week..."	1
CR4-01	Gay rights	Bush "...MR. LEHRER: Do you believe, in general terms, that gays and lesbians should have the same rights as other Americans? GOV. BUSH: Yes. I don't think they ought to have special rights, but I think they ought to have the same rights..."	Jerry Politex (Bushwatch/Tom Paine): "...Fact: "Bush has supported a Texas law that allows the state to take adopted children from gay and lesbian couples to place the kids with straight couples." Salon, 10/12/00. "Bush supports hate crime protections for other minorities! So Bush doesn't believe that gays should have the same "special" rights in this regard as blacks, Jews, Wiccans and others. Employment discrimination? Again, Bush supports those rights for other Americans, but not gays. Military service? Bush again supports the right to military service for all qualified people--as long as they don't tell anyone they're gay. Marriage? How on earth is that a special right when every heterosexual in America already has it? But again, Bush thinks it should be out-of-bounds for gays. What else is there? The right to privacy? Nuh-huh. Bush supports a gays-only sodomy law in his own state that criminalizes consensual sex in private between two homosexuals. New Republic, 10/13/00..."	1

HEALTH / SOCIAL SECURITY / MEDICARE / WELFARE<go back to the top>

Compassion Con credits total = 18