Texacutions -- Rick Perry and the death penalty

The Texas Tribune has an interactive tool they've put online to help their readers see how many executions have taken place during Rick Perry's term as Texas governor. They neglect to explain what his responsibility was to those condemned inmates. So as a reminder, they each received at least one trial consisting of a guilt/innocence phase and a punishment phase plus an automatic expense free appeal.

But here's the problem with the Tribune's tool. It only covers Perry's term in office, which has been quite long -- Thrice as Long as Average Texas Gov's, the Trib told us in January. If the number of executions mean anything other than as a club with which to beat up Perry, then they should have provided a year by year count as far back as the records are available from the source of the Trib's info, the TDCJ. The original intent of this post was to provide that yearly count for a more accurate comparison.

But along came Brian Williams to refocus the issue. Here is Brian Williams' question to Governor Perry at the broadcast debate last night:

WILLIAMS: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you...

(APPLAUSE)

Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?

I'm no expert on sleeplessness -- an advanced novice, perhaps -- but let me state for the record that the death penalty isn't a cause of insomnia, except perhaps to someone on the receiving end of it. The anti-death penalty movement is a false cause with which liberals try to attack conservatives, much like the anti-war movement.

In the old days opposition to the death penalty was based on the moral issue -- it was simply wrong to kill another human being. But the moral issue was too hard to argue when the condemned person was so notorious that no reasonable person could make a moral case for keeping him alive. Timothy McVay muted the anti-death penalty movement for a good while.

So now the argument is that the justice system is imperfect, and some on death row may actually be innocent.

DNA analysis has become more accessible, and numerous wrongly convicted inmates have been exonerated. And there are other imperfections to that part of the justice system that determines guilt or innocence. But it doesn't make sense to try to balance an imperfection in that part of the system by an adjustment to the penalty. If there's an adjustment needed it should be at the conviction phase of the trial, not the punishment phase, so that observers will be satisfied that a guilty verdict means the defendant is guilty.

The penalty assigned to a defendant who is found guilty shouldn't be tempered by a feeling that maybe he/she isn't really guilty. If enough people see a problem with the justice system then the code should be rewritten to make it harder to get a conviction.

That's not likely to happen, though, and it's not just in Texas. We live in punitive times. The general public is much upset by the thought of a guilty person going free than an innocent person getting convicted. Look at the outrage over the Casey Anthony not-guilty verdict. And compare that with the yawning epidemic that breaks out upon news that some innocent person has spent decades in prison for something he didn't do.

But as for the Texas Tribune and Brian Williams, the issue isn't about guilt, innocence, or punishment. It's all about politics. The wind that blew Barack Obama into the White House is now blowing against Rick Perry.

Comments

[Stewart Doreen]

If someone asked about the need for a woman to have the right to have an abortion and people applauded, would there have been such a response?

[Geo]

Good point, Stewart. Liberals try to float that leaky boat every time the issues of death penalty or abortion come up. The narrative is that only a hypocrite could favor the death penalty and oppose abortions. Never mind that the candidates for those two procedures land at very different places on the guilt/innocence scale.

[Auth]

The jobs had nothing to do with any bauilot funds. Perry has been very aggressive (and successful) in enticing businesses to relocate to Texas a no state income tax state. Texas is very rich in natural resources so there are many jobs in that industry. Texas wasn't hit as hard by the housing bubble and consequently the subprime housing bust as many states so it never lost as many jobs. Was this answer helpful?