By David Protess
March 20, 2010
With four days left until Texas inmate Hank Skinner is scheduled die by lethal injection, editorial writers across the state have stepped up their calls for Gov. Rick Perry to stop the execution and ask the courts for DNA testing of physical evidence preserved from the murder scene.
"It's Best to Test," proclaimed today's headline on the editorial page of the Houston Chronicle. "The prospect that Texas might send a man to his death without making every effort to be sure of his guilt unnerves even advocates of capital punishment...We desperately hope that either the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Rick Perry will stay Skinner's execution long enough to run the DNA tests."
Also today, Fort Worth Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders posed this question on the paper's opinion page: "Isn't a man's life worth an extra 30 days?" referring to the amount of time it would take to conduct the DNA testing if the governor grants a reprieve.
Meanwhile, the San Antonio Express-News weighed in yesterday with an editorial headlined, "DNA test needed in Skinner case." The editorial concluded: "The governor should stay Skinner's execution until the physical evidence can be tested to determine if indeed he committed the crime for which he has been sentenced to death."
Joining these voices were op ed columnist Matthew Wright in amarillo.com and guest columnists Rodney Ellis, Barry Scheck and Cory Session in the Dallas Morning News. Session was the brother of Timothy Cole, who died in prison ten years ago, only to be posthumously pardoned this month by Gov. Perry after DNA evidence established Cole's innocence of the rape for which he had been wrongfully convicted.
The Dallas Morning News also recently used the missteps in the Skinner case to call for the abolition of capital punishment in Texas, while former Bexar Co. District Attorney Sam Millsap wrote in the Houston Chronicle that "it's cases like Skinner's that ended my life long support for the death penalty."
The clean sweep by Texas opinion writers reflected the growing national media's take about the Skinner case. In just the past day, articles by L.A. Times reporter David Savage ("Texas inmate's final request: DNA testing") and Huffington Post opinion writer Judge H. Lee Sarokin ("Texas and Gov. Perry Apparently Indifferent to the Execution of a Possibly Innocent Man") raised troubling questions about the State's evidence that led to Skinner's conviction in 1994.
And more than 8,000 people have sent letters to Gov. Perry asking for a reprieve, while Skinner's supporters have "taken over" the governor's Facebook wall, according to the Texas Tribune.
In the face of the growing media and public opposition to the execution, the most important question lingers: Are the justices of the Supreme Court and the governor of Texas listening? The answer will determine whether Hank Skinner lives or dies next week.
Editor's note: The Medill Innocence Project is grateful for the media's acknowledgment of the ground breaking reporting by its student-journalists in the Hank Skinner case. It is important to point out, however, that the Project and its alums have not taken a position on Skinner's guilt or innocence other than to say that the case raises serious questions about the State's evidence. We also have never asserted that Skinner was "railroaded," as the Houston Chronicle's editorial indicated today. While we have joined in the call for DNA testing. it is because we believe it will help determine truth -- the ultimate goal for our reporting of possible wrongful convictions.
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THE LATEST
"Death row inmate entitled to delay for DNA tests" "If all goes as planned by the state of Texas, tomorrow will be the final sunrise Henry W. Skinner ever sees. Skinner, 47, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Wednesday for a brutal triple-murder committed in Pampa on New Year's Eve 1993. We believe that even the most ardent supporters of capital punishment, confronted with the facts below, will join Skinner in asking Gov. Rick Perry for a 30-day reprieve. In fact, the most ardent supporters of capital punishment — those most invested in making sure Texas does not execute an innocent person — are the ones who should be leading the call for the delay. There are seven untested items that contain DNA that could be dispositive of Skinner's claim that he was falsely convicted. The state has blocked that testing, noting that Skinner passed on a chance to have the testing done prior to his 1995 trial. That decision was made by Skinner's trial lawyer, who, noting that other DNA tests on items found at the crime scene damaged his case, didn't want further testing. Now, Skinner — represented by the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas School of Law — wants Gov. Rick Perry to use his authority to delay the execution for 30 days and order the DNA testing. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a 7-0 vote, on Monday recommended against a commutation or reprieve. Can there be anybody who does not see the reprieve request as a harmless one that should be granted, especially because there is Texas precedent for it? Jurors, working with testimony including some crucial portions later recanted, convicted Skinner of killing his girlfriend Twila Busby and her sons, Elwin Caler, 22, and Randy Busby, 20, at the Pampa home the four of them shared. Circumstantial evidence offered at the trial was tainted by seeming inconsistencies, including evidence showing Skinner was so incapacitated by drugs and alcohol that it was doubtful he could have stood up, much less kill three people (including the 6-foot-6-inch, 225-pound Busby). 'Evidence developed since Mr. Skinner's trial raises the level of doubt to full-scale alarm that the jury's verdict may very well have been wrong,' Skinner's lawyers told Perry in a letter dated March 11 in which they offer a compelling interpretation of facts pointing to another possible suspect — now dead — with possible motive to commit the crime. And, Skinner's lawyers told the governor, DNA on the untested items could prove whether jurors erred. 'While Texans undoubtedly support capital punishment, they insist that it be reserved for those who are clearly guilty,' the lawyers told Perry. In December 2004, Perry granted a 30-day reprieve for Frances Newton, a death row inmate who maintained her innocence in the shooting deaths of her husband and two children. Newton claimed that retesting of gunpowder residue from the crime scene would clear her. It did not, and Newton was killed by the state in September 2005. In granting the Newton reprieve, Perry wrote that 'Justice delayed in this case is not justice denied.' Perry is very familiar with the importance of DNA testing. He recently, as a result of DNA evidence, pardoned Tim Cole, who spent 13 years in prison for a rape the tests showed he did not commit. Sadly, as Perry noted, the pardon — the first posthumous one granted in Texas — came nine years after Cole died in prison. Last Friday, Perry went to Fort Worth to present the pardon to Cole's family. 'It means the world to me to be here today to look you in the eye and tell you that your son is pardoned,' Perry told Ruby Session, Cole's mom. 'I know that nothing that anyone in this room, this state, or this world can do could restore Tim to life, but we can state clearly, with the full weight of Texas law behind us, that your son was no criminal.' By delaying the Skinner execution and ordering the DNA tests, Perry can make sure that no Texas governor ever has to apologize to Skinner's family. We agree with former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap, who, weighing in on Skinner's behalf, noted that 'DNA evidence could show we've got the wrong man. ... but the state inexplicably has blocked that testing for more than a decade.' Millsap, in a column published in the Houston Chronicle, noted Skinner's lawyers also have asked federal courts to delay the execution. 'But frankly, I'd rather see Texas clean up its own house on this one,' Millsap wrote. 'Before we send a man to his death, shouldn't we do everything in our power to be certain of his guilt?' It is not a rhetorical question." |
(Updated March 23, 2010 8:00 p.m. CST)