Inside
NCR How
Texas celebrates human rights
As we look forward to Christmas,
its easier not to be confronted by ugly dilemmas such as Stanley Faulder,
on death row in Texas for the murder of Inez Phillips in 1975. If everything
goes according to plan, Faulder will be executed by lethal injection Dec. 10,
the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Faulder may well be guilty. Or he may not. And his guilt may be
relevant or it may not. We know that dozens of people have been released from
death row since DNA testing became acceptable. We also know that many murderers
are free today, having paid lesser dues to our dreadfully inconsistent system.
Some, however, for various crazy reasons, pay the ultimate price. We ought to
pray that theyre the genuinely guilty ones, for starters.
Nowhere do miscreants pay that ultimate price more diligently than
in Texas, a big state with a small heart and a jittery nervous system, which,
according to Amnesty International, executed 37 people in 1997. As raw revenge
this works well, but ultimately it is likely to confirm the view, obviously
already rampant, that human life is more trivial than sacred.
No two cases are the same, even in Texas, but Faulders may
be as typical as they get. Hes 61 now, has been under sentence of death
for 21 years -- anyone feeling stressed by the prospect of Christmas should
contemplate a year in his shoes.
The prosecution said Faulder, along with a former prostitute named
Linda McCann, beat and stabbed Phillips in the course of burglarizing her
home.
This account, not surprisingly, gets murky at once. For one thing,
no physical evidence was ever found. Theres another wrinkle: Faulder is a
Canadian national, but no one bothered to tell him he could seek legal and
other assistance from the Canadian consulate, a right ratified by international
convention. Furthermore, his requests for an attorney were ignored until, after
four days of interrogation, he signed a confession. This may be a true
confession, but after four days of questions people have been known to sign all
kinds of stuff.
The trial was speedy and the sentence death. In 1979, however, the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals commuted the sentence on grounds that the
confession was illegally obtained. But the son of the murdered woman -- the
Phillips are a rich oil family -- took justice more or less in his own hands.
He hired two private prosecutors. These offered McCann immunity, as well as
money -- the money ($15,000 plus) was the Phillips own but the immunity
wasnt really theirs to offer -- for testifying against Faulder. Being
already an admitted participant in the crime, such testimony by McCann was
illegal, but not to worry, this is Texas.
It gets more sticky, though. Even Texas law needed corroboration.
So the Phillips family paid McCanns husband $2,000 for testimony -- all
he had to say was that his wife told him the same as she had told the court.
Not until a month before the new trial did the district attorney appoint a
lawyer to give the appearance of propriety. Faulders court-appointed
attorney called no witnesses. The state called one, James Grigson, a notorious
expert-for-hire later expelled from the American and Texas psychiatric
associations for precisely such unethical behavior. But his testimony at the
time nailed Faulder by saying he was a menace if allowed to live, an opinion
necessary to secure the death penalty. No one testified that, due to a severe
childhood head injury, Faulder was liable to blackouts and other behavior
problems.
These are just a few highlights on the Texas justice
roller-coaster. Dec. 10 is Faulders ninth execution date. His is not much
of a life, but he is making the best of it. He has, when circumstances allowed,
acted as an unofficial nondenominational chaplain on death row. Not that this
makes him innocent -- many people get religion fast on death row.
Amnesty International and other networks are making last-minute
efforts to turn this travesty around. Theyre not asking for his release
but that his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment or some variation.
One suspects a day will come when Texans will look back in shame
not only that they killed people with such abandon but that they did it so fast
and loose -- well, slow and loose -- with so little thought to human rights,
which our country stretches so hard to proclaim around the world.
There is still time to write and stir things up. If you have an
official letterhead, use it. Complain to:
The Hon. George Bush, governor of Texas, State Capitol, P.O. Box
12428, Austin TX 78711; fax 612-463-1849; phone 512-463-2000;
Victor Rodriguez, Texas Board of Pardons, P.O. Box 13401, Austin
TX 78711; fax 612-467-0945.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, December 4,
1998
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