If you claim to be for the death penalty, it's a must read. . .and if you're from the right and whining about the Dems blocking of many of Bush's judicial appointees, realize that the person who prepared most of these briefs for captial murder cases and apparently failed to bring lots of extenuating circumstances to Bush's attention, is rumored to be a likely Supreme Court nominee if someone retires. . .

No quote from the article can possible summarize what appears to be a tragedy but this one comes close:

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

This final quote from the article is particularly damning:

Alberto Gonzales told me in 2000 that in his execution briefings he always presented Governor Bush with a "detailed factual background of what happened," along with "other outstanding facts or unusual issues." Yet a close examination of the written execution summaries he prepared for Bush certainly raises questions about the thoroughness of Gonzales's approach—and, ultimately, given the brevity of the summaries and the timing of their arrival at the governor's office, about the level of attention Bush could possibly have devoted to the clemency process. In his summaries of the cases of Terry Washington, David Stoker, and Billy Gardner, Gonzales did not make Governor Bush aware of concerns about ineffective counsel, essential mitigating evidence, and even compelling claims of innocence. These were all matters of life or death, requiring in-depth explanation and discussion, that no attorney in Gonzales's position should leave out of a written case summary or save for a thirty-minute oral briefing—especially if both are to be delivered on the very day of a scheduled execution. In a state where the criminal-justice system has erred with well-documented regularity, this was a grave failing.

I can't really say enough to explain the disgust I feel for Bush's record on capital punishment. . .

Read the whole article. . .Compassionate Conservatism, indeed. . .
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