Meet Kenneth Foster. He’s 31, and hails from San Antonio, Texas. Up until 1997 he ran a small record company, Tribulation Records.
On August 14th 1997, Kenneth was driving a borrowed car around the streets of his home town. With him were three friends, Dewayne Dillard, Julius Steen and Mauricio Brown.
The LaHood family are rich and influential, and Michael’s father an attorney who is highly respected in the Texas legal community. The family pushed for, and got, the result they wanted. Justice, if you like. Mauricio Brown was found guilty and executed for the crime in 2006. Dillard and Steen were given life sentences for their parts in the events, which is bad enough when you consider that they were in the car and 100 yards away from Brown at the time of the shooting. Brown himself has testified that the murder was unpremeditated.
But the worst part of the story is that Kenneth Foster, in the same car as Dillard and Steen, and equally unaware of what his homie was up to, was also sentenced to death.
In Texas, it now seems that being in the wrong place at the wrong time can kill you.
Kenneth’s downfall is The Law Of Parties, a Texan law designed to counteract conspiracy by charging accomplices with the same force as the main defendants. It’s at best a technicality, and at worst part of “the structure of the Texas’s legal system [that] makes it easier to sentence people to death”.(David Dow, founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and author of Executed on a Technicality (2005).
In an August 10th editorial in the Galveston County Daily News, Heber Taylor writes “If people in Texas let Foster die, we’ll be putting our approval on the idea that it’s OK to use a law designed to punish conspirators even in cases where there’s no conspiracy. And we’ll be saying we’ll stretch the law in cases where we’re mad enough against one criminal but we won’t stretch the law in cases where we’re not that mad at his two riding buddies.”
Yeah, ok, admission of bias. I’ll put my hand up and say that I’m completely against the death penalty, and in this case it seems especially farcical. Kenneth Foster committed crimes that night in August, sure. And he should be in prison. But he should not be on death row, about to die for a capital crime of which no-one including the Texan Criminal Court believes he’s guilty.
If anyone can explain that to me, I’d be grateful, because it’s making my head hurt.
Read more on the case here. (including more from the two pieces I’ve quoted from above.)
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 
This story is shockingly different than the truth. Here is what even Foster doesn’t contest.
1) Foster had shot at 3 people, wounding 2, one of them seriously.
2) Several days before Lahood’s murder, Foster and those same “men” committed an armed robbery. The victim’s cellphones were found in Foster’s trunk.
3) At the beginning of the night, Brown pulled out a gun and asked, do yall want to rob. They agreed and began to commit armed robberies.
4) Before the murder, 2 armed robberies had been committed, one of the victim’s was pistol whipped, and Foster helped pick the victims, dropped off the robbers, and picked them up and helped them get away.
5) Foster, the SOLE driver of that car, could freely decide where that car went. He spotted two mustangs and began to follow them nearly 6 miles with a route that has nearly 9 or 10 turns or intersections.
6) Foster drove past Lahood’s house. He could’ve kept driving, but he turned the car around and stopped. He says there was a dead end. There’s not one dead end in that neighborhood.
This is uncontested. Perhaps you read this and think it was an accident, however, this sounds like those guys were doing precisely what they had intended to do that night, find prey.
Brian:
I don’t contest any of this either. I’m not claiming Kenneth Foster is an innocent man of everything that happened on the night of August 14th. But the fact remains that he has been sentenced to death for the murder of Michael LaHood, and that is a crime for which he is not guilty. Provably not guilty.
I’ve also stated (in this post and elsewhere on my blog) that I oppose the death penalty in all forms, and in this case I feel that sentence seems not only unjust, but insane. At the time of writing, at least five members of the Texas State Legislature seem to agree with me, as they’ve written their own letters of support or stated their support for clemency.
Brian, you claim that what I have written is shockingly different to the truth. The truth is that on August 30th Texas is preparing to execute a man for a crime he did not commit. That, to me is the shocking part.
Please, read more on the case at http://savekenneth.blogspot.com. There are daily updates on the massive interest in the case and the growing groundswell of support. Thanks for reading the blog.
You don’t have to pull the trigger to be a murderer. I haven’t asked the lawmakers themselves, but I liken it to a robbery that you and I were going to commit. I build a bomb for you to use during the robbery. If you use it, I’m just as guilty as you are, no different than if I told you to do it.
Here, those facts that Foster was the only driver, he picked the victims, he decided to stalk those two cars. Those six miles weren’t on a straight away or on the highway. We’re talking about following someone for nearly 10-15 minutes, in a very circuitous route. He turned the car around and stopped in front of the house. He waited for the robbery to occur and sped away as a getaway to the shooting. Every action not only enabled the murder but furthered it. His culpability is no different than the shooter’s. In all probability, the shooter didn’t set out intending to murder.
However, in setting out intending to rob, they must accept any consequences that follow from those actions.
Lastly, I must admit he didn’t pull the trigger. But all those actions that led up to it were his. Furthermore, after the murder was committed, he didn’t stop to see if the victim was alive, he didn’t call the police, he drove off w/ the shooter, trying to get him to get rid of the evidence. It doesn’t get any more involved than that.
Brian:
it’s now becoming clear that Kenneth Foster’s trial was riddled with major defects, juror misconduct and constitutional violations. If the jury had been presented with a full version of the facts of the case, he would not have been found guilty of capital murder.
In a Habeas Corpus hearing in 2001 Kenneth presented evidence to demonstrate to the Texas State courts that he must be granted a new trial because he is innocent of capital murder and his joint trial with the admitted shooter was constitutionally deficient and resulted in an unjust verdict and sentence. The District Court found that Kenneth was entitled to a new trial.
It’s unlikely he will receive that trial as the fifth circuit, again presented with inadequate evidence (Kenneth’s lawyer’s booboo this time) ruled that he does not have that entitlement.
Kenneth is guilty of two robberies committed on the night Michael Lahood was murdered. I certainly agree with you there. He should be in jail for that, serving the same sentence as Dillard and Steen. He is instead on death row for something he didn’t do. The evidence, trial and Law Of Parties that found him as culpable as Mauricio Brown for that murder, are all fatally flawed.
On the day when the state of Texas reaches a grim milestone with it’s 400th execution since 1982, I really wish you and I didn’t have to have this discussion, Brian. The fact that we do is a damning indictment of American justice and it’s human rights record. Keeping watching the blog. I’ll be updating further as Kenneth’s execution date of August 30th comes around.