Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat:

Richard lawyer says Texas AG's office pushed for execution

© 2007 The Associated Press

“HOUSTON — An attorney for the only man put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court announced plans to review the constitutionality of lethal injection said staff at the Texas Attorney General's Office pushed for the execution.

“Michael Richard, 49, was executed Sept. 25 hours after justices decided take up a challenge from two condemned inmates in Kentucky over the same lethal injection procedures used by Texas. Richard's death also followed a refusal by Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, to keep the office open past 5 p.m. so his attorneys could file an appeal.

“David Dow, one of Richard's attorneys, said a lawyer on his staff informed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office about the failed attempt with the criminal appeals court about 6 p.m. But an assistant attorney general from Abbott's office told lawyers they had six minutes to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for Richard.

"They were being quite aggressively confrontational," Dow said.”

-So it appears that Justice Sharon Keller wasn’t alone in expediting the execution of Richard. That tool Greg Abbott had a hand in it too. Of course, maybe they were just acting in the name of some higher authority, perhaps Bob Perry, or Dr. James Leininger.

And we are responsible, too. The Republican Party Platform calls for capital punishment to be “swift and unencumbered,” and we’ve given them a lock on statewide offices for over ten years now. It’s time we paid attention to what they’ve been doing in our name. Make sure your voter registration is current; Harris County has scrubbed 100,000 names from the rolls since 2004. It’s time these pious plunderers had their asses handed to them.