{"id":2270,"date":"2007-08-09T12:06:14","date_gmt":"2007-08-09T17:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2270"},"modified":"2007-08-24T21:59:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-25T02:59:00","slug":"no-formal-study-has-been-done-on-the-number-of-defendants-subjected-to-the-law-of-parties-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2270","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;No formal study has been done on the number of defendants subjected to the law of parties in Texas.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Kenneth Foster and the Texas Death House<br \/>\nLiliana Segura, The Brooklyn Rail, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynrail.org\/2007\/7\/express\/kenneth-foster-and-the-texas-death-house\">July\/August 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In theory, the law of parties is \u201ca well-recognized legal document,\u201d says Houston defense attorney Clifford Gunter, and most states with the death penalty on the books include a similar provision for \u201cnon-triggermen.\u201d Nevertheless, critics of the Texas law say it\u2019s an aberration\u2014a slippery legal statute that stands in direct violation of the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Enmund v. Florida. Still the \u201cprevailing view,\u201d according to Gunter, Enmund held that the death penalty was unconstitutional for a defendant \u201cwho aids and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place or that lethal force will be employed.\u201d In Texas today, the law or parties says exactly the opposite.<\/p>\n<p>Even more troubling is the law in practice. When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.<\/p>\n<p>One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green\u2019s appellate lawyer, Verna Langham\u2014who also handled Kenneth Foster\u2019s first appeal\u2014sees as the danger of the law of parties. \u201c[It] is subject to such loose interpretation,\u201d she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. \u201cA kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death.\u201d Green was executed in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>No formal study has been done on the number of defendants subjected to the law of parties in Texas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynrail.org\/2007\/7\/express\/kenneth-foster-and-the-texas-death-house\">Read the report<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth Foster and the Texas Death House Liliana Segura, The Brooklyn Rail, July\/August 2007 In theory, the law of parties is \u201ca well-recognized legal document,\u201d says Houston defense attorney Clifford Gunter, and most states with the death penalty on the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2270\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-AC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}