The Warring States of NPF - The strange case of Kenneth Foster.

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The strange case of Kenneth Foster.

Quote:

Kenneth Foster's Fate

Peter Rothberg
Fri Aug 10, 1:08 PM ET

The Nation -- In less than three weeks Kenneth Foster, an African American man sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Michael LaHood, is scheduled to be executed in Texas.

LaHood's actual killer, Mauriceo Brown, was executed in 2006. Foster, who was in a car about 100 yards from the crime when it was committed, was convicted under the controversial Texas state "law of parties", under which the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime is abolished. The law can impose the death penalty on anybody involved in a crime where a murder occurred. In Foster's case he was driving a car with three passengers, one of whom, Brown, left the car, got into an altercation and shot LaHood dead. Texas is the only state that applies this statute in capital cases, making it the only place in the United States where a person can be factually innocent of murder and still face the death penalty.

Foster maintains that he did not know that Brown would either rob or kill LaHood. According to an Amnesty International investigation, there is evidence not heard at trial that the murder was an unplanned act committed by Brown, as the latter himself claimed before his execution.

In 2005, a federal district judge found a "fundamental constitutional defect in Foster's sentence" and ruled that Foster's jury had not been asked to determine if he had any intent to kill LaHood, and that this failure represented a misapplication of the law. However, the state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.

The crazy thing about this case is that no one argues that Foster killed the victim. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's award-winning columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote, the case "is further proof of how cruel, capricious, unjust and utterly insane our death penalty laws have become....Because of this tainted system, whether you believe in capital punishment or not, a man who did not plan or commit a murder will die August 30 unless somebody -- a judge, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and/or the governor-- has the heart and the guts to stop it."

You can help these folks get up the guts at freekenneth.com. Find updates on the case and urge members of the Texas legislature to stay Foster's execution and ask for a re-trial based on new evidence.

So, apparently, if your friend commits a crime that you didn't know about and wasn't involved in, you're just as guilty as he/she is and can thus receive the same penalty, even if you are legally and functionally innocent.

God bless Texas.

Hum.

I disagree with Bob Sanders.

Someone just needs the brain, they don't need hearts or guts.

I don't understand why anyone LIVES in that state.

Because, asides from the random shootouts in the streets, and the random citizen sacrificed daily to the Dark God Cthulu, it's actually quite the pretty place to live.

If you, y'know, like vast stretches of nothing but sand.

...Wow. I can understand the need for such a law, in theory, but in practice...

Do you know if they've tried to appeal the decision again? That's the only thing I can think of off-hand to get out, since it looks like no one in power has any interest in stopping the execution.

I am totally for accomplice laws, but this seems to be a perversion of it.

Did Brown return to the car, get in, and ride off with LaHood? If so, it could easily be seen as aiding and abetting the murderer fleeing the scene.

If not, that's rather damn tenuous.

Hell, even if Foster did help Brown excape the scene, he's only guilty of aiding a murderer.

Which doesn't carry the death penalty.

So if he helped Brown escape, lock him up for 25 years or whatever it is.

Don't kill him.

Even if it is only aiding murder, he didn't know anything about it. Even the guy who killed him wasn't planning to! What the hell is wrong with the legal system, where someone can be executed on a technicality? The man has already been on death row for ten years, and he didn't do shit!

This law is absurd. Sure, if he drove the getaway car, he should be punished...but NOT with death. If he really didn't know his friend was going to kill someone, he was in no way responsible for that death--he was only responsible for helping the murderer flee the scene.

To play Devil's Advocate, by helping him escape, he was helping him in the commission of a crime, in this case, murder.

Wouldn't the getaway driver of a bank robbery deserve the same punishment as the people who actually went inside?

Again, only to spur conversation. My thoughts on this matter aren't anywhere near that simple or concrete.