I spent my train journey home tonight writing a furious diatribe to the state of Texas on the death of Kenneth Foster. It was probably the angriest thing I’ve ever written, and I was fully prepared to throw it on the blog tonight as soon as I got the news I had been dreading.
Kenneth’s death sentence was commuted to life by Governor Rick Perry this afternoon, on the day he was scheduled to be executed.
I’m a little drunk and a lot emotional at the incredible news, so I’ll let Michael Graczyk of AP take up the slack…
HUNTSVILLE – Gov. Rick Perry accepted a recommendation from the state parole board and said today he would spare condemned prisoner Kenneth Foster from execution and commute his sentence to life.
Foster had been scheduled to die tonight.
“After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” Perry said in a statement.
“I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine.”
The seven-member parole board had voted 6-1 to recommend the commutation.
Perry did not have to accept the highly unusual recommendation from the board whose members he appoints.
Foster was the getaway driver and not the actual shooter in the slaying of a 25-year-old man in San Antonio 11 years ago.
Foster acknowledged he and his friends were up to no good as he drove them around San Antonio in a rental car and robbed at least four people 11 years ago before the slaying of Michael LaHood Jr.
“It was wrong,” Foster, 30, said recently from death row. “I don’t want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I’m straight up about that.”
Kenneth’s commutation is of course just the tip of the iceberg. 5 men are scheduled to go under the needle next month. Texas is still head, shoulders, chest and belly above every other US state in the numbers of men it sends to the death chamber every year. The fact that Rick Perry has seen sense in a case that reverberated around the planet should not make this the end of the story. I should of course mention that Gov. Perry also mentioned the Law of Parties in an aside as something that needs to be looked at by the legislature. I absolutely applaud that move, as Texas is the one state of the union to feel free to use that controversial ruling in capital cases.
Don’t stop the signal. Keep an eye on the shenanigans of them crazy Texans by visiting the Texas Moritorium Network, campaigning to end the death penalty in Texas.
Yippeekiyay, melonfarmers.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 
I’m sick of all the Kenneth Foster sympathy. What about Michael LaHood, the man who was shot in the head at close range? Foster and his three cronies followed them home from a restaurant after a night of robbing people at gunpoint. Finally, someone was murdered. Foster deserved to die. At least he would have had 11 years to find peace, see his family and friends. He and his three friends didn’t give Michael LaHood that chance. I’m sure you wouldn’t be happy with this decision if it had been YOUR family member or friend who they killed.
I have absolutely no idea how I would feel if one of my family or friends was murdered in the way Michael LaHood was. Angry? Sorrowful? Vengeful?
I do, however, know what one of his best friends, Sean Paul Kelley thinks of the case. Here it is.
“One night in August 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood, was murdered by Mauriceo Brown. And Kenneth Foster, Jr. was driving for Mauriceo that night. I don’t know what the circumstances of Kenneth’s involvement were beyond the fact that he was still in the car when Mauriceo pulled the trigger that sent a bullet through my friends brain, ending his life immediately.
Was he being forced to drive? Or was he along for the ride? I don’t care. Kenneth deserves and is receiving punishment for his role in the tragedy that occurred that night. But whatever punishment Kenneth does deserve for his role in my friends cruel murder, execution should not ever have been (or be) an option. He did not pull the trigger, or encourage Mr. Brown to pull it in any way, nor was he even aware that the murder was being contemplated or had been committed until after the fact. His punishment should not be execution.
But we are in Texas and in Texas barbaric laws prevail, like something out of Beowulf or the Old Testament or Reservoir Dogs–one of the very few movies I could not watch to the end for its unspeakable cruelty. Never mind that we are in the 21st century. Never mind that we are supposed to be modern.
I miss Michael, my dear friend, whom I nicknamed ‘Chainsaw.’ He was a big, musclebound, softhearted jabber-mouth, always talking and always cracking jokes. Mike was full of life. And although he was a body builder I never saw him angry and I never saw him so much as hurt anyone. His joy was infectious–everyone wanted to hang out with Mike and the ladies loved him, although he didn’t quite have the confidence to take advantage of it (yet). Why he chose a long-haired, poetry writing, guitar playing miscreant and reformed pot-head/high school dropout like myself I will never know. But I loved him dearly. The only time I ever cheated in college or university was for Mike. He hated poetry and asked if he could use one of my poems for his Freshman Comp? How could I say no?
I still remember eating chicken fried steak with him and D-Day–the third and most successful leg of our triumviral friendship–at Maggies at 3:00am after clubbing, back when the three of us attended the local junior college, were obsessed with the opposite sex but too stupid to realize they were just as obsessed with us as we were with them. God how I’d give anything to have him back. Thinking of him brings a tear to my eyes even now. What makes it worse is that I’d returned from living out of the country a few months before he was killed. A new career kept me busy. We kept postponing getting together. My last words to Mike–two weeks before he was murdered–were a cliché for all clichés: “we’ll do it next weekend, buddy, we’ve got all the time in the world.” I couldn’t hear the clock ticking. I wish I’d listened closer.
And for that I hated Mauriceo and his gang even more, and for a long time. But the execution of a young man who didn’t even kill Mike? That’s not justice. It’s senseless vengeance, a barbarism cloaked in the black robes of justice.
Never knowing that a friend of one of the men involved in Mike’s murder might reach out to me for help I wrote this two years ago about the death penalty:
Whenever people ask me about the death penalty I always reply: when you make it to the Pearly Gates, and Saint Peter asks, “justice or mercy?” Which will you choose?
Usually they sputter or blurt something out like, “the death penalty doesn’t have anything to do with that.” I reply, “the death penalty has everything to do with that. You just can’t see it.”
Then they say, “what if it happened to someone you know.” And I reply, “In 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood was murdered. And I don’t want his killer to die. I want his killer to repent. And then spend the rest of his life in prison helping other prisoners with less onerous sentences to see the light.”
That’s when they say, “you’re a softy, wishy-washy feel-good, self-helping liberal wimp.” By that time its too late to ask them, “what requires more courage: revenge or forgiveness?”
I prefer mercy, wimp or not.
Kenneth did not ask for my help; he’s already accepted his fate. Someone he helped asked me to help him. I cannot live with myself if I don’t try. Wimp or not.
He is scheduled to be executed on the 30th of August.”
I have repeatedly stated on the blog and in the comments that my opposition to the case stems from the fact that Michael LaHood’s murderer was tried, convicted and executed, and yet still Kenneth Foster had to pay some screwed-up price for Texas’ screwed-up version of justice. He’s in jail for life for what he did. That’s punishment enough.
When even people closely, emotionally connected with the case can see it’s fundamentally flawed, that should tell you everything you need to know.
Try reading more about the case, and find joy in your heart that an innocent man lives to breathe another day.
An “innocent man” – total crap. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Your liberal/Marxist ideology poisons your attitude toward justice. Especially the Negro, only the harshest measures will deter some of his tribe, an innocent man is dead and his willful killer lives on. Only a “Democracy Now” freak could rejoice.