As Texas prepares to kill the first two of six prisoners it has lined up for execution in August, Amnesty International warned today that Governor George Bush continues to ignore international standards of justice and decency. Amnesty International sent Gov. Bush a letter early today, urging him to grant clemency and halt the lethal injections scheduled to take place within one hour of each other tomorrow evening. Brian Roberson, who is African American, was sentenced to death for the 1986 killing of an elderly white couple in Dallas County. The prosecutor at his trial systematically removed African Americans from the jury pool, indicating that they did not meet the standard of intelligence required to be jurors and were not educated enough to sit on a jury.
International standards oppose the death penalty for the mentally impaired.
In yet another blatant example of the lottery of U.S. capital justice, Cruz's white co-defendant, charged with the same murder, received a prison term in exchange for testimony against Cruz. The organization pointed out that over 80 per cent of the more than 650 people executed in the USA since 1977 were convicted of crimes involving white victims. It is time for the U.S. leadership, including Gov. Bush, to find the courage to overcome the politics of this brutalizing punishment and offer human rights leadership. John Satterwhite, who has been diagnosed as learning disabled and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and Richard Jones, about whose guilt there remain troubling doubts, are set to die in Texas in the next two weeks. David Gibbs and Jeffery Caldwell are also due to be killed in the Huntsville lethal injection chamber before the end of the month.