Dear Mr (redacted),
As you no doubt know, one of the interesting features of the Texan criminal justice system is the unwillingness of the attorney general's office to reopen cases where there is a real question of the guilt of the accused and subsequently executed. Since the state of Illinois is almost certainly more rather than less scrupulous in its treatment of defendants, and it racked up something like a ten percent mis-conviction rate upon investigation, I tend to assume that some 15 of the people executed during Bush's governorship were innocent of the crime for which they were executed.
This is, of course, only indirect evidence, but I would be more willing to agree that I was wrong if the state was eager to investigate every single case where a plausible doubt had been raised. I ought, perhaps, to add that I do not in the least wish to say that the people executed were useful citizens, redeemable, or innocent of absolutely everything they were charged with - only that they were often executed when their guilt in the particular matter was in doubt, when extenuating circumstances were not taken into account, when all those things that someone less morally obtuse than your president would have at least thought about, were taken into account.
And may I congratulate you on the measured and temperate way in which you respond to criticism?
best wishes
Alan Ryan
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Alan Ryan
New College, Oxford
Tel: 01865-279501
PA: 01865-279515
Fax: 01865-724047
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MY RESPONSE BACK TO HIM ---
I appreciate your quick response! I am disappointed, however, that you didn't have the names to support the assertion. As a supporter of the death penalty, I would be very angry if innocent people in Texas were put to death by a man I admire.
Intellectual honesty and moral clarity, it seems to me, would require that a reference as "serial killer" necessitates at least some proof rather than "I tend to assume." Assuming doesn't quite make the case as "serial killer."
In Bill Clinton's visits to England, I never read any letters to the editor about the death penalty relative to Ricky Ray Rector. Did you ever write such a letter? From a Google search:
RICKY RAY RECTOR
Executed by State of Arkansas on January 24, 1992
Ricky Ray Rector was retarded due to lobotomy. His IQ is unknown, but his retardation must have been profound, as before being executed, he saved his last dessert "for after". Governor Bill Clinton, who was running for Presidency, did fly back to Arkansas to be sure his execution would be carried out.
I have enjoyed our exchange. By the way, perhaps you would do me a favor.
I am doing research on the reason for Bill Clinton's departure from Oxford those many years ago. According to a writer who spoke with a former State Department employee, Clinton was asked to leave Oxford and the country because of an alleged sexual assualt on a young woman he met in a pub named Eileen Wellstone. Apparently, Wellstone's parents did not press for criminal charges and a Rhodes Scholar was simply sent home. I am not going to assume guilt here, and I would like the real story. Are you able to shed light on it?
Thank you for your help. Here is to a safer world, even if we disagree how we arrive there.