As if torture weren't enough

[pecunium]

Who thinks I might be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Good Ol' Bertie Gonzales?

No one? Well perhaps I am being unfair. Maybe he was just too busy with unknown things as Bush's Whute House Counsel to read the memoranda he signed (or perhaps he has an autopen) in which case he isn't guilty of actually supporting torture, just of misfeasance.

So maybe, with a mmore weighty office he'll be more attentive, and that means we ought to give him another bite at the apple of public office.

Nope. He has a track record, and it ain't good.

I am not, per se, against killing people (heck, I take a pittance of your tax dollars to do it, so being dead set against it would seem hypocritical). I am against the state doing it, because the state can't do it fairly.

But Gonzales... he is all for it (along with Scalia, which means his priest ought to refuse him communion... he hasn't made the distancing step that Kerry did, nope Scalia has said the more Christian a country is, the more capital punishments it will carry out). How much is Gonzo for it?

Enough that when evidence of non-guilt was presented to him, he chose to leave it out of his review of at least one petition for clemency.

The Washington Post says Gonzales's Clemency Memos Criticized (registration required). Some excerpts.

In 1995, a one-eyed drifter named Henry Lee Lucas was headed for execution by injection in a Texas prison for the murder of an unnamed woman, one of hundreds he confessed to killing in a crime spree lasting more than a decade.

The task of recommending whether then-Gov. George W. Bush should grant a reprieve or commute Lucas's death sentence fell to Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush's counsel. In a memo to Bush dated March 13, 1995, Gonzales marshaled a case for Lucas's guilt. He noted that Lucas had given a sheriff a drawing of the victim, and attached a record of Lucas's eight other Texas murder convictions, each of which led to lengthy or life prison sentences.

Left out of Gonzales's summary was any mention of a 1986 investigation by the Texas attorney general's office that concluded that Lucas had not killed the woman, and that he had falsely confessed to numerous killings in an effort to undermine the veracity of his confessions to the crimes he did commit.

While the six-page memo factually summarizes Lucas's court appeals, "it does not really address in any way . . . all the questions that were raised about his guilt," said Jim Mattox, the Texas attorney general from 1983 to 1991, who instigated an investigation of police conduct in the case.

...

White House spokesman Brian R. Besanceney said in response to the complaints yesterday that Gonzales and his colleagues in the Texas counsel's office "treated each clemency petition with careful scrutiny and sensitivity." He also said the summaries Gonzales prepared represented "a small fraction of the information provided to the governor" and sought only to document "the governor's final decision" rather than recommend a course of action.

Pete Wassdorf, head of the general counsel's office for the Texas attorney general, who served as Gonzales's deputy at the time, also said additional information about some of the cases was provided to Bush in other documents. But only a few of the 62 clemency memos Gonzales prepared for Bush between January 1995 and November 1997 make any reference to additional documentation.



This is the level of care we see in matters of life and death... how much can we expect in lesser matters?

Comments

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Salon takes a close look at his track record too. He scares me worse than Ashcroft.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, Mr. Gonzales is a Good Team Player -- he'll tell his boss precisely what he thinks his boss wants to hear. I think the present Administration already has far too many people like that in it.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

This was really good -- I've already passed it along to several people. Thank you for writing it.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has accused me of being a single-issue voter because I opposed GWB in 2000 because of the state of death penalty jurisprudence in Texas. What made me that single issue voter was not merely opposition to the death penalty itself (Clinton signed death warrants when he was governor of Arkansas) but GW's position that, in spite of documented cases where people had incompetent counsel or were the victim of police or prosecutorial misconduct, absolutely nothing was wrong with the way Texas tried and executed people. I figured from that that the man was either a) too stupid to understand how flawed their system was or b) amoral enough that he was willing to play with people lives for political gain. In either case, I did not want him for President. (I even reregistered as a Republican to try and vote him out in the primary.)

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Scalia has said the more Christian a country is, the more capital punishments it will carry out

I believe that, though probably not for the reasons that he does.

To wit, an excerpt from George Carlin's rant on the Ten Commandments, from his HBO special Complaints and Grievances:

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take "thou shalt not kill." The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doing the killin' and who's gettin' killed.

The whole thing is quite entertaining; here's one place to read it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

But the Hebrew is clear... it says murder. Murder is very different from mere killing.

Murder is the unlawful (or unjustified) killing of another. If you come at me with a baseball bat (or even with fell intent and your bare hands, and my defense leads to your demise, it isn't murder.

One might take the attitude that Christ's commandment to turn the other cheek raises all killing to the level of muder (unless it be by misadventure) but I don't think I can take it that far.

TK

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I agree that killing and murder are not synonymous. I am against capital punishment for pretty much the same reason you stated (I do think that some people commit acts so heinous that they forfeit their right to live amongst decent human beings, and I also think that most capital crimes these days don't meet that test, nor do we have the ability to prove most capital cases conclusively and fairly). I, in fact, would go so far as to say that capital punishment in cases that can't be proven conclusively and fairly is tantamount to murder, and that there is something about the zealous religious mindset that condones it. And in this country, the Christians with power tend to be the zealous kind.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

We are, I think, in all sweet accord.

TK