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Justice....at last!

Justice, just at the last minute, has been done! Kenneth Foster's death penalty has been commuted to a life sentence by the Governor of Texas. The background to the Kenneth Foster "story" can be found in a MPS posting, yesterday, Execution of a non-murderer.

Meanwhile, The Nation addresses the whole issue in a piece "Evolution in Texas":

"There are many Americans who do not believe in evolution. And it is probably fair to say that a disproportionate number of them reside in Texas.

But it is from Texas that we gain confirmation of the absolute certainty that human evolution is a reality.

When George Bush was governor of Texas in the 1990s, he approved executions with impunity, sending to death those who might have been innocent and those who might have been guilty, those who had repented and those who had not, those who had adequate representation and those whose lawyers slept through the trials, those who had the mental capacity to understand their crimes, those whose mental state would have barred even a trial in more civilized jurisdictions.

In all, Bush signed more 150 execution orders as governor, a record for the state and nation. The world press recognized him as the "Texecutioner" or, in the slightly less volatile phrasing of London's Independent newspaper: "a death penalty enthusiast."

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