... on a matter of Texas law. Read the comments for the ensuing debate regarding Tony A's / Mornings Minion's post on "Bush and Clemency".
Labels: Bush, Capital Punishment, Law, Texas Our Texas
posted by Pro Ecclesia 11:38 PM
34 comments
A convert to the Catholic Church who became Catholic because of a belief in and devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. * A graduate of Baylor University and the University of Virginia School of Law. * Former Mayor of the Town of Columbia, Virginia. * Married with four children: two boys and two girls. * Primary interests include the Catholic Church, family, Early American History, and law/politics * Primary purpose of this blog is fostering enlightened discussion about the roles played by the institutions of religion, family, and state in our daily lives. * Under the protection of St. Thomas More, martyr, and patron of lawyers, judges, civil servants, politicians, statesmen, and large families (not to mention troubled marriages).
Thomas More, counselor of law and patron of statesmen, merry martyr and most human of saints:
Pray that, for the glory of God and in the pursuit of His justice, I may be able in argument, accurate in analysis, keen in study, correct in conclusion, loyal to clients, honest with all, courteous to adversaries, trustworthy with confidences, courageous in court. Sit with me at my desk and listen with me to my clients' tales. Read with me in my library and stand always beside me so that today I shall not, to win a point, lose my soul.
Pray that my family may find in me what yours found in you: friendship and courage, cheerfulness and charity, diligence in duties, counsel in adversity, patience in pain -- their good servant, and God's first. AMEN.
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Prayer to St. Thomas More for Lawyers and Judges
Dear Scholar and Martyr, it was not the King of England but you who were the true Defender of the Faith. Like Christ unjustly condemned, neither promises nor threats could make you accept a civil ruler as head of the Christian Church.
Perfect in your honesty and love of truth, grant that lawyers and judges may imitate you and achieve true justice for all people. AMEN.
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"Give me the Grace Good Lord, to set the world at naught; to set my mind fast upon Thee and not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths. To be content to be solitary. Not to long for worldly company but utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of the business thereof."
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Litany of St. Thomas More, Martyr and Patron Saint of Statesmen, Politicians and Lawyers
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"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."
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"What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by Reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?"
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"The things that we pray for, good Lord, give us grace to labour for."
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34 Comments:
To paraphrase the Witch-king of Angmar: "Do not get between a BDS-sufferer and his prey."
I'm glad you are posting over there also Jay. Vox Nova definitely needs a bit more intellectual "diversity" and expertise. The items the hosts of the site recently posted to "celebrate" the fourth of July are a hoot, and reveal much more about themselves than they do about America.
Interesting set of comments there, Jay.
I was reminded of the 1990 Democrat primary in which a former Governor and the Attorney General each ran commercials bragging about how many had been executed during their respective terms. Not that either of them were entitled to any credit for those executions.
Interesting Jay, that you accuse me of partisan gun-slinging and go to great lengths to show that the proximity to evil of Bush was very much reduced, and yet would never make such an argument about abortion. Let me spell it out for you: abortion and torture are both instrinsically evil. George Bush's proximity to each and every act of torture by the US is far greater than the proximity of your average Democrat to each and every abortion. His cooperation with evil is also evident in the case of the death penalty in Texas, your legal reasoning notwithstanding, if nothing else than on the grounds on intent (Cinton in Arkansas, by the way, was equally culpable on those grounds).
Other stuff: anonymous's reference to BDS. Please. This term was coined by torture-lover and war-zealot Charles Krauthammer; if you want to align yourself with his views, be my guest. I'm concerned here with a *consistent* ethic of life.
Donald: first, Vox Nova is quite diverse-- there are a number of Republicans plus a contibuter to the "red state" blog. But I would put it to you that the "median poster" on Vox Nova is actually closer to the "median Catholic" in the world--- especially insofar as they are highly suspicious of American foreign policy and the unbridled free market. You need to get beyond the US debate here-- it's a big Catholic world out there!
"first, Vox Nova is quite diverse"
Sure Tony the posters go from far left to not so far left with the odd Bush hating paleocon tossed in. The only real diversity comes in the comboxes.
Sure Tony the posters go from far left to not so far left with the odd Bush hating paleocon tossed in. The only real diversity comes in the comboxes.
No, no, no. There are no left-wing posters at Vox Nova. The posters go from far Catholic to not-so-far Catholic with a few inconsistent but still good Catholics who rightfully wish Bush would choke on his own Dark Force Lightning. It is Bushites like you who mistake true Catholicism for leftism.
"It is Bushites like you who mistake true Catholicism for leftism."
Thank you brave anonymous for helping me make my point, although the Fourth of July postings on Vox Nova today really prove my point better than either of us. Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Having said that I do believe my intial post was unfair to new contributor Alexham and, to a certain extent, Radical Catholic Mom.
Donald,
Again I submit: your advantage point is the USA. Ask Catholics in Europe and Latin America what they think of Bush and his war-- trust me, we are moderates on Vox Nova!
Tony, we are of course living in America. As to the rest of the world, I would assume that faithful Catholics, as opposed to those who enter a Church only for Baptism, Marriage and Burial, would probably track more conservative than the general population in their countries. Consider the Partido Popular, People's Party, in Spain for example. Faithful Catholics are the core of their constituency. On March 9, 2007 they held a mass protest in Madrid which attracted an astonishing 2.1 million spaniards to protest against the appeasement terrorist policies of the Zapatero socialist government. The rest of the Catholic world is not as liberal as you think.
The rest of the Catholic world is not as liberal as you think.
You mean, of course, that the Catholic world is not as Catholic as Morning's Minion thinks (do we really need to go over your Bushite abuse of language again?). Which is nonsense, since if they weren't Catholic they wouldn't be Catholic, would they?
Hating the spawn of Darth Sidious and Jar-Jar Binks sitting in the White House and his war isn't liberal or leftist, it's simply Catholic. So is socialism, provided the Church isn't persecuted more than is proper. And what is Catholic is inherently centrist and moderate. So Vox Nova is centrist (apart from the inconsistent Catholics you call paleo-cons, who are redeemed by their opposition to Darth Jar-Jar and the war as noted above). Really.
"So is socialism, provided the Church isn't persecuted more than is proper."
And the proper level of persecution of the Church is what? Lie down brave anonymous, your exteme case of BDS is making you delirious.
I'm sure I would find all this commentary about President Bush much more disturbing if the President were Catholic.
I supported a Catholic for President in 2000, Alan Keyes; Bush wasn't my first choice.
But I have no doubt that he's done better than Gore or Kerry would have done.
I was also fascinated by this comment:
Hating the spawn of Darth Sidious and Jar-Jar Binks sitting in the White House and his war isn't liberal or leftist, it's simply Catholic.
Hating Bush is Catholic? I must have missed that one.
Either anonymous is a brilliant satirist or an ignorant troll. Touhg to tell.
Err, tough.
"Either anonymous is a brilliant satirist or an ignorant troll."
Good point Paul. Yesterday I thought he simply was a cowardly troll, but the posts are so off the wall that satire may have been his intent.
I definitely think anonymous is being sarcastic.
"Interesting Jay, that you accuse me of partisan gun-slinging and go to great lengths to show that the proximity to evil of Bush was very much reduced ..."
Tony A,
You may be the single most political person I've with whom I've ever come into contact. You can read politics into anything. I was not going to "great lengths to show the proximity to evil of Bush was very much reduced". As I said over an over again at Vox Nova, the point of my comments was merely to correct an error that has been repeated over and over and over again about the power of the Governor of Texas vis-a-vis the clemency process.
As someone who spent most of my life in Texas, as well as being a member of the Texas Bar, I am tired of hearing and reading about this fallacy about the "Texecutioner" from those who want to use this issue for partisan politics. It is simply not true, and I am merely trying to correct the record.
There's plenty out there for you to take Bush to task for; you don't need to repeat an untruth to make your point.
I'm the most political?? Please. You guys have been trying to align the Church with the Republican party for years. I'm the one who says an honest Catholic can vote for any US party, or none. Get back to me when everybody on the Catholic right can say the same thing.
I'm not trying to align the Church with any party, since I'm a member of no party myself. And it is fair to say that I have been far more critical of Republicans on my blog and in my commentary than you have ever been of Democrats in your commentary.
The fact is that the Catholic vote seems to be split roughly 50/50 between the 2 major parties. I'm fairly happy with that, as that's probably how it should be (although I'd favor a Catholic-influenced 3rd party as the preferable option).
The question is are YOU happy with that? I get the impression from your posting that indeed you are not, and that you believe the "natural home" of Catholics is in the Democrat Party.
Tony I have voted for two pro-life Democrats, one as recently as the gubernatorial election in Illinois in 1998. I have no problem whatsoever in people voting for pro-life Democrats. Have you ever voted for a Republican for a state wide or national office?
Notice that this blog has a "Catholics Against Rudy" logo on it. I'd say that Jay has demonstrated a fairly good record of consistently putting partisan politics aside in order to more fully comport his voting behavior with Catholic teaching. Not everyone can make that claim, can they?
Thanks, Paul. But the fact that Tony A sees this as a "Republican" blog and misses the details such as the "Catholics Against Rudy" logo merely underscores my assertion that he sees partisan politics in EVERYTHING.
I could say the sky is blue and Tony would accuse me of hating the sky because it was insufficiently "Republican" and of wanting to use nukes in order to turn the sky red.
I could say an apple is red and Tony would accuse me of giving Republicans credit for the apple.
Then he'd say I was insufficiently Catholic for failing to acknowledge the Church's teachings that God created everything, including both the sky and the apple. Of course, when I respond that, indeed, I do believe God created everything, he'd accuse me of holding latent evangelical views on Creationism and having an incomplete conversion to Catholicism.
Let me get back to the original issue:
Andrew Sullivan just linked to an old Atlantic article by Alan Berlow on Bush's legacy of "clemency" in Texas:
"On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.
Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. 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 declined to be interviewed for this story, but during the 2000 presidential campaign I asked him if Bush ever read the clemency petitions of death-row inmates, and he equivocated. "I wouldn't say that was done in every case," he told me."
Jay:
I've seen you use terms like "Evil Party", "Moloch Party", and "Party of Death" to refer to the Democrats. I assume you are well aware that the Church thinks in terms of a "culture of death" and that both major parties are offenders? Your language is blatenly (and offensively) partisan.
Of course I have, because I sincerely believe that about the Democrats (just as Mark Shea uses those terms).
I've also used less than flattering terms about the Republican Party, but I'd be lying to say that I see the Republicans as being as bad as the Democrats. I don't. The Republicans are bad on a lot of issues, but it's hard to be as bad as a party who is as committed to the availability of abortion-on-demand as are the Democrats.
Tony,
Again, what Bush was denying was a stay of execution, NOT clemency. The Governor of Texas has no power to grant clemency absent the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Parole.
Believe me. I'm not lying about what the Governor of Texas can and cannot do regarding clemency.
Now, if you want to criticize Bush for denying a stay in 28 of 29 cases, then be my guest. The additional 30 days granted the petitioner might have allowed for time for something to turn up. It might have allowed the courts to take another look at the evidence. But after that 30 days, the Governor has no power to do anything else. The execution then moves forward.
Again, I'm not defending Bush as much as I'm saying don't use false data regarding the laws of Texas. And I consider Andrew Sullivan to be as authoritative a source on Texas penal law as I do Wikipedia.
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles - Executive Clemency In Texas
FYI, here is the relevant portion of the Texas constitution (emphasis added):
Section 11 - BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES; PAROLE LAWS; REPRIEVES, COMMUTATIONS, AND PARDONS; REMISSION OF FINES AND FORFEITURES
(a) The Legislature shall by law establish a Board of Pardons and Paroles and shall require it to keep record of its actions and the reasons for its actions. The Legislature shall have authority to enact parole laws and laws that require or permit courts to inform juries about the effect of good conduct time and eligibility for parole or mandatory supervision on the period of incarceration served by a defendant convicted of a criminal offense.
(b) In all criminal cases, except treason and impeachment, the Governor shall have power, after conviction, on the written signed recommendation and advice of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, or a majority thereof, to grant reprieves and commutations of punishment and pardons; and under such rules as the Legislature may prescribe, and upon the written recommendation and advice of a majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, he shall have the power to remit fines and forfeitures. The Governor shall have the power to grant one reprieve in any capital case for a period not to exceed thirty (30) days; and he shall have power to revoke conditional pardons. With the advice and consent of the Legislature, he may grant reprieves, commutations of punishment and pardons in cases of treason. (Amended Nov. 3, 1936, Nov. 8, 1983, and Nov. 7, 1989.)
Thanks, Publius.
I actually started writing that comment before you posted your link, believe it or not. I think the divergence between our comments' timestamps might have something to do with my computer clock being fast.
Or not. I just checked and Blogger goes by their own clocks, not the local computer clock. Hmm.
Your post is better than mine because yours is an authoritative primary source, whereas mine is an authoritative secondary source.
;-)
Needless to say, Wikipedia, Andrew Sullivan, and the Atlantic are none of the above.
I really don't know what you guys are trying to prove with this line of thought. Did Bush have limited ability to grant clemency than governors elsewhere? Undoubtedly. But what does that prove? Very little. Bush made it quite clear in his public statements that he was refusing to intervene by choice (hence the quote about not wanting to challenge jury decisions) rather than by limitation. I'm sure you experts are aware that the govervor appoints the members of the Board of Pardons and that, by the end of his term, Bush had appointed all 18 members. I'm sure you also realize that the governor has a lot of influence over the Board, as shown by the one time that Bush did the honorable thing-- in a case where the guy seemed clearly innocent, Bush told the Board not to let that happen-- and they voted 17-1 to commute. It is blindingly obvious that he could have used this moral suasion in other cases, had he chosen to do so.
But he didn't. Not only was he largely unconcerned, going so far as to mock pleas for clemency, he chose to rely on an utter incompetent (Alberto Gonzales) to keep him informed. Gonzales produced sloppy analyses that deliberately abvoided producing any mitigating evidence whatsoever. This is important, as nearly a quarter of the condemned were represented by attorneys who had been disciplined for professional misconduct, and 30 percent of those executed under Bush were represented by attorneys who presented no mitigating evidence whatsoever.
You see, it all boils down to intent, doesn't it? It's not that he couldn't do anything-- he chose not to. This is not the pro-life thing to do. And it does open him up to charges of hypocrisy over the Libby commutation -- back to square 1, aren't we? :)
I do not doubt that Bush could have used the bully pulpit to do more, and said as much at your original post.
The point that I have been trying to make is not a political one. As I also said at your post, I do not doubt that Bush would have been very stingy in granting clemency if he had the power. I'm just sick of people making fallacious statements that are not reflective of the real situation in Texas.
"And it does open him up to charges of hypocrisy over the Libby commutation -- back to square 1, aren't we? :)"
Not at all because commuting a 30 month prison sentence for perjury for a felon with a spotless record prior to conviction and not granting a 30 day stay to a multiple murderer, or granting clemency if that had been within his power, are quite dissimilar. If Bush had commuted the sentence of a multiple murderer who happened to be an associate of his, then a charge of inconsistancy would lie. Here you are comparing apples and rock salt in order to make a partisan attack.
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