Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed on February 24, 2010, on the first day of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty. His wife Sandrine Ageorges, the international representative for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, writes a chronicle of his programmed death on abolition.fr.Those who know Hank and his case have believed for years that the case is so obvious that he will undoubtedly get a new trial, or at least DNA testing. But not in Texas, which has executed 449 people since 1982; not in a state where despite a law passed in 2001, access to post-conviction DNA testing has hardly ever benefited those on death row; not in Texas where, we are told, no innocents have been executed but where the governor silences the Texas Forensic Commission to avoid an official statement to confirm that Todd Willingham, executed in 2004, was actually and factually innocent.
Not in a state where numerous court-appointed attorneys are incompetent while they hold their clients’ lives in their hands; not in Texas where the price of blood exists as justice is regarded as justified vengeance; and even less in a state where judges, district attorneys and sheriffs are still elected and their principal goal is immediate results for political gain.
What to think of a case where almost none of the evidence collected on the crime scene was tested for the trial or during the appeals? What to think of how little testing has been done to exonerate him? How to accept that available forensic technology exists to quickly confirm his innocence, but that no court will order the evidence to be released for private testing? And what to think of the Gray County D.A., Ms Lynn Switzer, who refuses to release the evidence while she took an oath to serve justice and seek the truth and does not need a court decision to grant a stay of execution and order testing?
How to fathom that before going to the crime scene, the sheriff had already designated Hank as the murderer and did not conduct any impartial investigation while an obvious suspect was right there? How not to react to the absolute contradiction between the conclusions of the victims’ autopsies and Hank’s physical incapacitation?
How to accept that the court appointed attorney for his trial, who had resigned for having embezzled funds, kept his law license after resigning and was replaced by his own assistant for the trial? What to think of this same attorney who was paid the highest fee ever paid in Texas to represent a capital defendant – an amount that almost matches the fine he had to pay the IRS to avoid going to prison?
In this sordid environment that mixes politics and corruption, the reality of this case and the truth hardly weigh anything on the scale of justice, even when a man’s life is at stake.
Today, more than ever, it won’t be over until it’s all over and the battle is just beginning.
Not in a state where numerous court-appointed attorneys are incompetent while they hold their clients’ lives in their hands; not in Texas where the price of blood exists as justice is regarded as justified vengeance; and even less in a state where judges, district attorneys and sheriffs are still elected and their principal goal is immediate results for political gain.
What to think of a case where almost none of the evidence collected on the crime scene was tested for the trial or during the appeals? What to think of how little testing has been done to exonerate him? How to accept that available forensic technology exists to quickly confirm his innocence, but that no court will order the evidence to be released for private testing? And what to think of the Gray County D.A., Ms Lynn Switzer, who refuses to release the evidence while she took an oath to serve justice and seek the truth and does not need a court decision to grant a stay of execution and order testing?
How to fathom that before going to the crime scene, the sheriff had already designated Hank as the murderer and did not conduct any impartial investigation while an obvious suspect was right there? How not to react to the absolute contradiction between the conclusions of the victims’ autopsies and Hank’s physical incapacitation?
How to accept that the court appointed attorney for his trial, who had resigned for having embezzled funds, kept his law license after resigning and was replaced by his own assistant for the trial? What to think of this same attorney who was paid the highest fee ever paid in Texas to represent a capital defendant – an amount that almost matches the fine he had to pay the IRS to avoid going to prison?
In this sordid environment that mixes politics and corruption, the reality of this case and the truth hardly weigh anything on the scale of justice, even when a man’s life is at stake.
Today, more than ever, it won’t be over until it’s all over and the battle is just beginning.
Click here to sign an online letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to support Hank’s Clemency Petition, no later than February 17th
Click here to visit Hank Skinner's support website
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