Despite this, Bush says he is ''absolutely confident'' that ''we have never put an innocent person to death.'' He says the most ''profound'' decisions he makes are over executions. ''I get the facts, weigh them thoughtfully and carefully, and decide,'' Bush said.

But two men convicted of murder in Austin, Texas, may be on their way to freedom in a case that glaringly exposes Bush's inattention to detail. Bush did not pay attention, even when the real murderer confessed to the crime.

In 1988, Pizza Hut employee Nancy DePriest was raped, robbed, and murdered. Two men, Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger, were arrested. Ochoa said detectives intimidated him into a confession by threatening him with the death penalty, showing him photos of death row and how lethal injections were done.

Ochoa, told that Danziger was ratting on him, said Danziger did it too. To escape the death penalty, the two ''confessed'' and received life sentences.

That was the end of the matter until 1996. Achim Josef Marino, who was in prison for a long string of robberies and sexual assaults, but is now a born-again Christian, wrote a letter to Austin police to confess to the crime.

In his letter, Marino told the police where to find key evidence. The police promptly found it. But no one used it to free Ochoa and Danziger.

In 1998, Marino sent his confession to Bush. It was his third attempt to confess. ''I did this crime and I was alone,'' Marino wrote. ''My conscience still sickens me. I cannot help Nancy Lena DePriest or her family, but at least I can make amends ... by doing my Christian duty and come clean ... The Christian lifestyle and value system demands that I do this, even at the loss of my life, which I'm fully prepared to lose and expect to lose.''

On the death penalty, Bush says, ''I analyze each case when it comes across my desk.'' But on this matter of life imprisonment for two men, Bush's office never moved on the letter, even though it began ''RE: Murder Confession.''

Bush's aides say there was no point in bothering Bush about it because Marino said that he had also written the local police.

''The governor's office doesn't investigate cases,'' Bush spokesman Mike Jones last week told reporters last week. Asked why Bush's office never checked to see if the Austin police did anything about the case, Jones complained that Bush gets about 1,400 letters a year from inmates.

So it was not Bush who assured justice was served, even though he says that ''in every case, we've adequately answered innocence or guilt.'' It was law students and professors at the University of Wisconsin.

Four years after Marino's first confession, the Wisconsin Innocence Project just recently convinced local authorities to conduct DNA tests. The tests found that the semen found on DePriest is neither that of Ochoa nor Danziger.

Jones maintains ''This matter was handled appropriately.'' But Danziger, now 30, suffered permanent brain damage in beatings during his decade in prison. Even though it was not a capital case, this travesty began with the death penalty.

Professor Keith Findley of the Wisconsin Innocence Project said, ''The threat of the death penalty seems to have led to a false confession.'' Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, said, ''It's the most extraordinary, profoundly disturbing false confession case I've seen. Nobody can tell me that in this case the death penalty element was not uniquely corruptive.''

The killings and arrests did not happen on Bush's watch. The confession did. Bush may get 1,400 letters from prisoners every year, but few start by saying, ''RE: Murder Confession.'' If Bush pays this remarkably little attention to detail, so little that two innocent men - one of whom is now brain damaged - cannot enter his 15 minutes of ''profound'' thoughts, it speaks to a Bush more shallow than we thought.

If this is what he means when he says ''I analyze each case,'' he is a man who cannot be left alone for 15 minutes in the White House.

© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company

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