[CUADPUpdate] Call Texas NOW!

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

Greetings All,

The Texas Board of Pardons and paroles voted today to recommend that 
Texas Governor Rick Perry grant clemency to Kenneth Foster, who is 
scheduled to be exterminated at 6pm Central Time, today.  We should 
be reminded that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
similarly voted 6-1 to spare the life of the profoundly mentally ill 
death row inmate Kelsey Patterson in 2004, and Rick Perry overruled 
that recommendation with the result that Patterson was put to death.....

Today is a different day.  I just left a voicemail for Gov. Perry and 
will try for a live operator again after I send this.  Art Laffin 
reached a live person who only wanted to know "Are you for or 
against?"  I will also send a fax.  Please make your call and if you 
have a fax machine, send a fax as well.  The message is 
simple:  "Please take the recommendation of the Texas Board of 
Pardons and paroles and spare the life of Kenneth Foster."

Calling from Texas: (800) 252-9600
In Austin or from out of state: (512) 463-1782
Fax (512) 463-1849

Call now!

Thanks.

--abe

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Board votes to spare Texas man set to die tonight

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended today that Gov. Rick
Perry spare condemned prisoner Kenneth Foster from execution and
commute his sentence to life.

The vote from the seven-member board was 6-1. The announcement came less
than seven hours before Foster was scheduled to be taken to the death
chamber for lethal injection.

Perry does not have to accept the highly unusual recommendation from the
board whose members he appoints.

There was no immediate response from the governor's office.

Foster was the getaway driver and not the actual shooter in the slaying of
a 25-year-old man in San Antonio 11 years ago.

Foster acknowledged he and his friends were up to no good as he drove them
around San Antonio in a rental car and robbed at least four people 11
years ago before the slaying of Michael LaHood Jr.

"It was wrong," Foster, 30, said recently from death row. "I don't want to
downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I'm
straight up about that."

Their robbery spree, while they were all high on alcohol and marijuana,
turned deadly when Foster followed LaHood and his girlfriend to LaHood's
home about 2 a.m. Aug. 15, 1996. One of Foster's passengers, Mauriceo
Brown, jumped out, walked up to LaHood, demanded his wallet and car keys,
then opened fire when LaHood, 25, couldn't produce them. LaHood, shot
through the eye, died instantly.

Brown ran back to Foster's car and they sped away. Less than an hour
later, Foster was pulled over for speeding and driving erratically.
Foster, Brown, Dwayne Dillard and Julius Steen  all on probation and
members of a street gang they called the Hoover 94 Crips  were arrested
for LaHood's slaying.

Brown and Foster, tried together, were convicted of capital murder and
sentenced to death. Foster was set to die 13 months after Brown, 31, was
strapped to the same death chamber gurney in Huntsville for lethal
injection.

Foster's execution would make him the third Texas prisoner executed in as
many days and the 24th this year in the nation's most active capital
punishment state. On Wednesday evening, John Joe Amador, 32, was put to
death for the slaying of a San Antonio taxi driver 13 1/2 years ago.

Foster's scheduled execution piqued death penalty opponents who criticized
his conviction and sentence under Texas' law of parties, which makes
non-triggermen equally accountable for the crime. Foster would join a
number of other condemned prisoners executed under the statute, including
one put to death earlier this year.

"This is a new low for Texas," said Larry Cox, executive director of
Amnesty International USA, a human rights organization that opposes the
death penalty in all cases. "Allowing his life to be taken is a shocking
perversion of the law."

Foster's lawyers were arguing in the courts that statements from Dillard
and Steen, who were in Foster's car that night, clarify and provide new
evidence that support Foster when he says he didn't know Brown was going
to try to rob and shoot LaHood.

"I didn't kill anybody," Foster insisted from death row. "I screwed up. I
went down the wrong path. I fault myself for being in this messed-up
system."

Foster said he was some 80 feet away from the shooting.

"It's hard for you to anticipate how Brown is going to react," Foster
said. "Texas is saying flat out: You should have known better.

"In life, we have hindsight. Texas is saying you better have foresight.
They're saying you better be psychic."

Dillard now is serving life for killing a taxi driver across the street
from the Alamo two weeks before LaHood's slaying. Steen testified at
Brown's trial and received a life sentence in a plea bargain.

Brown testified at his trial the shooting was in self-defense, that he
believed LaHood had a gun. Authorities, however, never found another
weapon near LaHood's body. Foster did not testify.

"I thought what (Brown) said was good enough," he said from death row.

Mike Ramos, among the Bexar County prosecutors handling the case when it
went to trial, said he found Foster's claims unbelievable and was
irritated by a publicity effort to spare Foster.

"When you let somebody out of your car with a loaded handgun, what do you
expect?" Ramos said. "If he didn't realize it could happen, I think he's a
liar."

Last weekend a group of Foster supporters picketed outside an Austin
church Gov. Rick Perry attends.

"These guys are rewriting history," Ramos said. "He was far from any kind
of angel they're trying to portray."

Ramos said it was clear to him that Foster was "the puppet master pulling
all the strings" during the robbery spree.

Nico LaHood, whose brother was killed, said Wednesday he was frustrated
that people were willing to believe only Foster's story, which he called
"ridiculous and not true."

"I don't know what dynamics are going on that allow us to make the person
who is the wrongdoer to become the victim in this case," LaHood said. His
brother, he said, was being "lost in the whole thing."

(source:  Associated Press)

SENT BY:


Abraham J. Bonowitz
<abe at cuadp.org>

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                       YES FRIENDS!
       There is an Alternative to the Death Penalty

   Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
   (CUADP) works to end the death penalty in the United
  States through aggressive campaigns of public education
    and the promotion of tactical grassroots activism.

    Visit <http://www.cuadp.org> or call 800-973-6548
  PMB 335,  2603 NW 13th St (AKA Dr. MLK Jr. Hwy)
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