One can, of course, grant Bush the benefit of the doubt and say, "Well, he looked at the evidence in the Spence case and the Graham case, and it seemed clear to him that they were guilty even if others were not convinced." The problem with doing that in Texas is that, unlike a typical governor of one of the 38 death penalty states who may be asked to review an occasional capital case, Bush eats death sentences for breakfast. The sheer number of executions works against his claim that he "seriously" reviews any of them. Then again, as Clinton might say, it probably depends on what you mean by "seriously." Judge Al Gonzales, who was Bush's legal counsel for the governor's first 59 executions, says Bush would typically spend about a half hour on each of the cases.

Someone once suggested that explaining due process to George W. Bush is like explaining a sundial to a bat. Last year, the governor signed off on the execution of Canadian Joseph Stanley Faulder, who was convicted of murdering a wealthy oil heiress at a trial in which the prosecutor was literally hired and paid for by the victim's family while the state's principal witness was paid more than $10,000 to testify. Does Bush really think a victim's family should be doing that? Bush approved the execution of Andrew Cantu, although Cantu had neither state nor federal habeas review of his case. Does Bush know why habeas corpus is enshrined in the Constitution? And he signed off on the death of James Beathard despite the fact that his co-defendant, Gene Hathorn Jr., recanted his testimony and admitted that he, not Beathard, had been solely responsible for the murder of three members of Hathorn's family.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to grant Beathard a new trial because state law requires that new evidence be presented within 30 days after a judgment is entered. Hathorn's recantation arrived 11 months too late. How did Bush satisfy himself that Hathorn was lying? Does he really think a bureaucratic 30-day time limit should trump a human life? Does he really expect us to believe that after "thoroughly" reviewing these cases he had "no doubt" that all three men were provided due process?

These cases are not anomalies in a smoothly functioning justice system. They are, in fact, frighteningly commonplace. In June, the Chicago Tribune reported that among the 131 men and women who had been executed under Bush up until that time, 40 were condemned in trials where the defense attorneys presented no mitigating evidence or only one witness during the sentencing phase of the trial. Another 29 went to their deaths based in part on testimony by a notorious psychiatrist -- Dr. James Grigson, aka "Dr. Death" -- whom the American Psychiatric Association found unethical and untrustworthy.

And 23 were executed on the basis of testimony provided by jailhouse informants, considered to be among the least credible witnesses. Earlier this month, the Dallas Morning News reported that among the 461 Texas capital cases it examined, nearly a fourth of the condemned were represented by attorneys who had been disciplined for professional misconduct. Certainly one might make a case that some of these people were actually treated fairly despite the ostensible miscarriages of justice. But would you really want to try to make the case for all of them? Bush does.

Bush must know at some level that the Texas criminal justice system is a disgrace. He can tell NBC's Tim Russert, "I'm for public defenders," but he knows that only three of the state's 254 counties have them, that he vetoed a bill that would have expanded the program and that during his first five years in office, the state received more than $150 million in federal criminal justice funds -- and didn't spend a nickel of it on defender services.

In January, Bush's Illinois campaign manager, Gov. George Ryan, announced a moratorium on executions in his state because of its "shameful record of convicting innocent people." And what constitutes a "shameful record"? For Ryan, a strong supporter of capital punishment, it was 13 wrongful death sentences.

Bush, meanwhile, remains certain nothing could possibly go wrong and has rejected any pause in the execution machinery of Texas. "I've thought about it," he said in June. "We don't need a moratorium ... I believe the system is fair and just." End of conversation.

Bush vests the Texas criminal justice system with the kind of infallibility creationists reserve for the Bible. Part of what it suggests is that Bush, like many of the voters he is undoubtedly trying to appeal to, is willing to assume that anyone caught up in the criminal justice system is guilty. It further suggests a certain contempt for the very "law of the land" he tells us he was sworn to uphold virtually every time he signs off on another life. And it suggests he is willing to gamble with something more important than whether a tax cut or a prescription drug plan or privatization of Social Security will actually be good for America. He is willing to gamble with people's lives.

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