... no Texas, noticia hoje o Público. O beneficiado foi Kenneth Foster culpado de estar no local errado à hora errada. O Texas é o estado americano campeão de execuções, muito por força da acção do então governador ... George W. Bush, actual inquilino da Casa Branca. Vale a pena ler este artigo da irmã Helen Prejean no qual ela explica como funcionava o sistema de garantia que Bush tinha montado para permitir a análise dos recursos. Garantia de que a pena de morte era sempre aplicada, afinal.
Cito : "In the twenty-first century, a state governor represents the last vestige of the "divine right of kings," because he has absolute power over life and death—especially when such power is entrusted to politicians motivated more by expediency than by conscience.(...) George W. Bush during his six years as governor of Texas presided over 152 executions, more than any other governor in the recent history of the United States. Bush has said: "I take every death penalty case seriously and review each case carefully.... Each case is major because each case is life or death.(...) To make sure that he never had to examine death sentences seriously, Governor Bush used a legal tactic similar to the one used by the US Supreme Court to block death row petitioners' access to constitutional claims. He restricted the standard for clemency so severely that no petitioner could qualify. He stated that since the courts had "thoroughly examined" every obscure detail of a death row petitioner's claims and found no grounds for injustice, it was not his place to "second-guess" the courts.(...) The aphorism "A hammer, when presented with a nail, knows to do only one thing" applies, par excellence, to George W. Bush. As governor of Texas, Bush tackled the social problem of street crime by presiding over the busiest execution chamber in the country. At the time of the thirteen death row exonerations in Illinois, Bush stated publicly that although states such as Illinois might have problems with a faulty death penalty system, he was certain that in Texas no innocent person had ever been sent to death row, much less executed. That remains to be seen. What is clear is that he had, as governor, no quality of mercy."
Vale a pena ler o artigo na íntegra com o relato de casos reais e das pulhices que Bush e a sua pandilha - como o tal Gonzalez que agora se demitiu - faziam para garantir o seu único objectivo: aplicar sempre que possível a pena de morte.


 

Pedra do Homem, 2007



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