Texas Set to Possibly Execute Another Innocent Man Today

The bloody-minded, death-obsessed state of Texas, which has already
demonstrably executed at least one innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham
(who was falsely accused and ultimately killed by the state for the
alleged arson "murder" of his two little children when in fact they'd
died because of a fire caused by an electrical fault), is about to
execute yet another probably innocent man today.

This time it's Hank Skinner, 47, who has spent 16 years on the
state's bustling death row protesting his innocence in the 1993 New
Year's Eve murder of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons, aged
20 and 22.

The thing about Skinner's case is it would be relatively easy to
prove whether or not he was really the killer of the three. There are
two bloody knives that have never been tested for Skinner's DNA--or for
the DNA of Twila's uncle, the man who had reportedly made several
unwanted sexual advances at her earlier that evening, leading her to
leave a party early, and who Skinner claims is the real killer. Nor was
semen that was found on Twila Busby, who was raped, or skin found under
her fingernails, ever DNA tested to see who they belonged to.

There were, to be sure, plenty of circumstantial reasons at the time
of the trial to suspect Skinner. It is undisputed that he had been
drunk and passed out on the couch in Busby's house shortly before the
murders, which occurred in the same room he was in. The drunken Skinner
also staggered from the home in Pampa, TX, his hands bloodied, following
the killings. But Skinner maintains that he had cut his hand, falling
off the couch, and that the blood was his own. He says he had woken up
to find Busby and her sons already dead.

Incredibly, police investigators at the crime scene never
took fingernail clippings from Busby, nor did they take a vaginal swab
at the scene, though she had clearly struggled and had apparently been
raped.

Skinner's court-appointed trial attorney could and clearly
should have sought that DNA testing before or even during his trial, but
didn't bother to do so--no surprise, given the low quality of public
defender representation provided in Texas, especially at that time.
(Incredibly, that defense attorney, Harold Comer, was the same person
who, as a district attorney, had earlier had prosecuted Skinner for two
minor crimes--assault and car theft! Comer had subsequently lost his
prosecutor's post when he pleaded guilty to mishandling cash seized in
drug cases his office had handled. Somehow, the great state of Texas
didn't deem that offense sufficient to cancel his law license, or to
prevent him from getting court-assignments defending capital cases like
Skinner's.)

But Skinner's current appellate lawyer, Rob Owen, a
University of Texas law professor, says that's no reason not to do those
tests today, to settle the matter once and for all--before Skinner is
executed.

For the past eight years, though, Skinner's prosecutors, with the
backing of state and federal courts, have successfully blocked his
efforts to get that DNA testing. The resistance of the prosecutors to
testing in itself should make appellate judges, parole boards, and the
state's governor suspicious. Instead, they have all so far backed the
prosecution. Why? What are they afraid of? That Skinner will be shown to
be innocent? That other prisoners will demand DNA testing? And then the
question has to be: And what's wrong with that?

Skinner and his attorney Owen earlier this month asked the US
Supreme Court to block the execution and to order testing. As Owen told
the Los Angeles Times, "In any investigation today, all of this
evidence would have been tested for DNA. But why not do the testing
now?" Today, the high court announced it was rejecting that appeal,
meaning Skinner will be executed later in the day.

The justices on the Supreme Court should have listened, on March 19,
to six men who had spent a collective 67 years on death rows for crimes
they were later able to prove they did not commit, These men had
gathered to call on Texas to do the right thing, and allow time for DNA
testing of the evidence in Skinner's case.

Curtis McCarty, who himself spent 21 years on Oklahoma's death row
waiting to die, only to finally get DNA testing of evidence that finally
proved his innocence, says, "When evidence is available to be tested,
it is criminal and unconstitutional not to test it."

McCarty is right. But the Supreme Court, and lower courts in both the
federal and the Texas state system, as well as in the state courts of
many other states, don't care about justice. They only care about
"process." In their view, if a defendant doesn't raise an issue--like
DNA testing of evidence--during a trial, even if the reason is an inept
or perhaps even conflicted attorney as in Skinner's case, the
opportunity has been missed, and there's no going back. In the view of
these "justices" and judges, it is better to let an innocent man be
killed by the state, than to have to violate the sanctity of protocol.

The gratuitously cruel attitude of the state of Texas, where the
court of appeals rejected Skinner's request for DNA testing, and where
Gov. Rick Perry has been unwilling to intervene, has been clearly
illustrated in its treatment of Skinner's wife, Sandrine
Ageorges-Skinner, who has for 21 months been barred from visiting her
husband on death row, on the technicality that she is a foreigner (she
is a French national). Within days of Skinner's execution, through the
intercession of the French Consulate in Texas, she has been allowed to
see Skinner, but the warden has retaliated against this order from above
by shaking down his cell repeatedly.

Skinner came within a week of execution in February, when
a state judge delayed the date for a month to allow his appeal to the
US Supreme Court.

At this point Skinner's only hope is a reprieve by Gov. Perry. To
take action on this outrageous case, and call on Gov. Perry to grant
Skinner's reasonable request to have the evidence in his case DNA
tested, go now, without delay, to:

Write
Gov. Perry