http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/07/berlow.htm
Here is cited an article in the Atlanic Monthly, The Texas Clemency Memos by Alan Berlow.
The article primarily concerns research by Mr. Berlow on documents released under Texas’ laws on Public Information. |It concerns clemency memos, documents submitted to the Governor of Texas, in this instance Mr. Bush, to inform a decision for clemency towards a condemned prisoner. You will no doubt recall Mr. Bush’s adamant insistence that all such persons as suffer capital punishment in Texas were justly served. Mr. Berlow’s article puts considerable strain on that contention. It should be noted that the person charged with preparing these documents was Alberto Gonzales, current White House Counsel. You may recall hearing his name bruited about as a possible Supreme Court candidate.
Mr. Berlow’s article is very troubling to the notion of a careful and exacting review on the part of then-Governor Bush. Consider, only, the case of David Wayne Stoker. (I make an extensive quote from the article in question, presuming that his does not run afoul of copyright niceties…)
"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.
(emphasis added in dismay)
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…"
As noted, Stoker was executed on June 16, 1997. Mr. Brewer reports other equally troubling actions, and I recommend his article. I presume the article is factual, as easily sufficient time has passed for a public rebuttal, or a filing of charges for libel. As none has been forthcoming, I am confident of the factuality of the points in this article.
Resolved, then, that GeeDubyas pretence of careful and precise attention to the entreaties of condemned men is just that, a pretence. No such efforts were made, and it is entirely possible that, indeed, at least one person died unjustly.