Saturday, January 17, 1998

'Bloodthirsty' justice system in Texas

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN -- I am normally a great fan of Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times, but I think we will have to agree he was a little ... over the top the other day.

He wrote of "Texas' bloodthirsty criminal justice officials in Texas, where liberals are required to carry visas and compassion is virtually illegal. It's a state that has shown itself perfectly willing to execute the retarded and railroad the innocent. ... Texas is by far the most backward state in the nation when it comes to capital punishment. ... As for Texas, the best thing about the Tucker case is the spotlight it is throwing on the state's fetish for capital punishment." And so forth.

Oh, dear. I am sure Brother Herbert is by now hearing from many Texans gently correcting his misimpressions in the most courteous fashion. (It's OK, Bob -- I know from long experience that the ones who write in red crayon on Big Chief tablets threatening to kill you for opposing the death penalty never actually do it.)

Unhappily, we must admit Herbert has some truth on his side. We have executed the retarded and the insane with disgusting regularity and demonstrable callousness. And we have even executed the innocent, although I would remind Herbert it was the Supreme Court of the United States that backed up our right to do so, on the curious grounds that said innocents had been so careless as to fail to come up with proof of their innocence within the requisite 30 days after trial. Death for procrastinators.

Mercifully, Herbert did not go into our new habit of executing foreign nationals. And, yes, it is true that half of the people put to death in this country last year were executed in Texas, an unseemly proportion that might point some toward the conclusion that we are "bloodthirsty."

But I must protest the allegation that liberals have to carry visas here and that compassion is virtually illegal. In fact, Texas liberals are a hardy native species, still flourishing after all these years.

We speak with the same peculiar accent as our compatriots, wear cowboy boots and eat barbecue, and yet our hearts bleed with the regularity of Old Faithful for everyone from the glandularly obese to milk-shy Hottentots (although some of us were observed gloating when Sen. Phil Gramm got his in '96). We are not rare or endangered; in fact, we're tougher than 50-cent steak. We fight hard against these sorry old right-wingers, who are also our friends, neighbors and kinfolk, and laugh even harder.

It was from the thin, stony soil of the Texas Hill Country that the populist movement first grew -- the most democratic political organization in this nation's history. In modern times, we have sent such populists as Sam Rayburn, Wright Patman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ralph Yarborough to Washington, and their legacy is enduring.

I do not deny our state, as a whole, has a screw loose in its thinker assembly on the subject of the death penalty (and gun control and a few others). The trouble, Brother Herbert, is that although it is possible to shame even the Texas Legislature, it is not possible to do so from New York while being patronizing. That. Does. Not. Help.

I have hesitated to write about Karla Faye Tucker on the grounds that the governor has enough pressure on this one already. And I would remind all hands that the guv can only commute for 30 days. If you recall, our Ma and Pa Ferguson granted so many pardons that a state constitutional amendment was passed in 1936.

The Board of Pardons and Paroles has to ask for clemency before the governor can act. This case should be a wash for Bush politically: Having Tucker executed will help him in Texas, but it may haunt him in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2000. Bill Clinton, that noble Democrat, left the campaign trail in '92 to go home and personally see to the execution of a retarded citizen in Arkansas in order to prove he was "tuff on crime" (as cynical and conscienceless a ploy as politics has ever witnessed). George Dubya has no such problem; he's a Republican, and Texas has already executed enough people to gag a maggot.

Given this political balance, Shrub is free to do what he thinks is right. And then the question becomes: Is there a single reason to think the world will be a better place if the state of Texas kills Tucker?

Not all the crazed bloodthirstiness of the criminal justice system is lodged in Texas -- note the insanity of trying Theodore Kaczynski, who is clearly nutty as a fruitcake (that's a highly technical psychological term). The man thinks he's getting instructions from his teeth. This is as insane as letting Colin Ferguson, the New York train killer, defend himself. The word "justice" is disgraced by these travesties.

Obviously, finding someone who is clearly guilty "not guilty by reason of insanity" is an offense to justice and logic. What we need is a new category: "guilty but insane." And who is responsible for crimes committed by the insane? It's in the same category as getting hit by lightning. All we can do is try to improve our pathetic system for dealing with the mentally ill.

Molly Ivins' e-mail address is mollyivins@star-telegram.com.

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