Hyerdahl wrote:

> In Texas, Critics Question Bush's 'Culture of Life'
> By Jeff Franks, Reuters
>
> HOUSTON (March 22) - President Bush's intervention for Terry Schiavo
> has opened old wounds in Texas, where death penalty opponents say his
> words of support for a "culture of life" ring hollow after so many
> executions during his time as governor of the state.
>
So the right-wing bastards are hypocrits;
anything else new?

D.
> Bush said he stepped into the Schiavo case because the United States
> should have "a presumption in favor of life," but there were 152
> executions in Texas during his administration, including some in which
> the convict's guilt was in doubt, critics said.
>
> "It's hypocrisy at a thousand levels," said University of Houston law
> professor and death penalty defense attorney David Dow.
>
> "I saw many, many cases where there was substantial doubt about whether
> someone was guilty or whether the death penalty was the appropriate
> sentence, but he never said anything," said David Atwood, head of the
> Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "I really can't say he cares
> about life."
>
> "We all recognize there is a difference between an innocent person and
> someone who has committed a heinous crime, but to say one life is
> important and one isn't, that's politics," Atwood said.
>
> Bush has defended the high number of executions by saying he was
> confident everyone put to death in Texas was guilty because they had
> had a fair hearing in the courts he believed capital punishment was a
> deterrent to crime.
>
> He interrupted a Texas vacation and flew to Washington to sign an
> emergency law passed by Congress on Monday that forced a review of the
> Schiavo case in federal court.
>
> Schiavo, 41, has been in a vegetative state since a heart attack in
> 1990. Last week, a Florida court, at her husband's request, ordered the
> removal of the feeding tube keeping her alive, but her parents argued
> it should stay in place.
>
> "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and
> substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a
> presumption in favor of life," said Bush, who has spoken often of
> creating a "culture of life" by limiting such things as abortion and
> stem cell research.
>
> Death penalty opponents said Bush did not give the same presumption to
> death row inmates in Texas, where he used his power to grant an
> execution stay only once while governor from 1995 to 2000.
>
> In 2000, the state set a U.S. record with 40 executions, including that
> of Gary Graham, whose guilt was hotly contested and became an
> international controversy.
>
> "In the face of pretty substantial evidence that Gary Graham was not a
> murderer, George Bush didn't say anything about a 'culture of life,"'
> Dow said.
>
> Legal experts say Bush has not been totally consistent on the
> "right-to-die" issue because in 1999 he signed a Texas law similar to
> the Florida law under which a judge ordered the removal of Schiavo's
> feeding tube.
>
> The Texas law allows for life support to be stopped under certain
> circumstances at the request of a family member or other appropriate
> surrogate.
>
> "If this case had been in Texas the same thing would have happened as
> happened in Florida," said John Robertson, professor at the University
> of Texas law school and author of a book on bioethics called "The
> Rights of the Critically Ill."
>
> But, he said, Bush's support of the emergency bill for Schiavo was not
> "a direct contradiction" of the Texas law.
>
> "He's saying he thought it was good enough from the state's perspective
> at the time, and now he's saying there may be cases that might need a
> second look," he said.
>
> Diane Clemens, head of the Houston-based Justice for All victims'
> rights group, said death penalty opponents were not making legitimate
> comparisons.
>
> "This woman is an innocent, brain-damaged individual who has harmed no
> one. Killers are convicted murderers who have harmed many people. They
> have had a fair process," she said.
>
> "They have had the very process these people would try and deny Schiavo
> -- and that is a request for life at the federal level, in the federal
> courts."
>
> On Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president's
> decision was based on principle, not politics.
>
> "It (Schiavo case) is a complex case, where serious questions and
> significant doubts have been raised," he said. "And the president is
> always going to stand on the side of defending life."
>
>
> 03/22/05 18:32 ET
>
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