Ann Richards: No friend of poor and oppressed on death row

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards’ death brought accolades from politicians as far apart as former President Bill Clinton and current Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Yet when it came to executing the poor and oppressed, Richards presided over 48 executions—a record that has only been broken by one other governor: George W. Bush.

Of the 48 executed, over half were people of color, some were disabled and others were immigrants who were not citizens and yet were denied their consular rights guaranteed under the Vienna Convention.

Richards was no friend to James Russell, a Black prisoner executed under her governorship in 1991, while a large number of anti-death-penalty activists protested outside the death house in Huntsville. Russell had written a book about his case giving substantial evidence of his innocence.

Richards was no friend to Johnny Frank Garrett, who was executed on Feb. 11, 1992, for a killing he committed when he was 17 years old. Garrett was, according to Amnesty International, “extremely mentally impaired, chronically psychotic and brain-damaged.”

Texas executed Jesus Romero in 1992. The entire defense offered by his Texas court-appointed attorney was a 20-word statement to the jury: “You’ve got that man’s life in your hands. You can take it or not. That’s all I have to say.” Richards, known for her quick responses, found no words for this travesty.

In 1993, Richards’ third year as governor, national attention was drawn to two separate murder cases in Texas. Both defendants were 17 years old at the time of the crimes. In one of the cases, a white supremacist skinhead, Christopher Brosky, was given 10 years probation for the murder of Donald Thomas, a Black man. Yet a young Black defendant, Gary Graham, also known as Shaka Sankofa, had been condemned to death for the killing of a white man on the testimony of only one eyewitness who was 40 feet away in a dark parking lot.

Richards did not comment on that glaring inequity.

Despite a massive campaign by his supporters around the world, Sankofa was executed by then-Gov. George Bush on June 22, 2000.

In 1993, Richards became the first and only U.S. governor to execute two people who were not citizens just two days apart.

Carlos Santana was executed on March 23. He was a citizen of the Dominican Republic. He admitted to participating in a robbery in a period in which, he explained, he couldn’t find work in Houston and his wife was pregnant with their second child. He expressed that he was shocked when his partner shot and killed a man during the robbery.

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is from Texas and had been friends with Richards over the years, tried to see her before Santana’s execution to present a 120-page clemency petition. She refused a meeting with Clark and with the ambassador from the Dominican Republic.

Two days later, on March 25, Mexican citizen Ramón Montoya was executed. The people of Mexico were so outraged over his execution—the first of a Mexican citizen by the U.S. in over 51 years—that his body was met by more than 3,000 people at the international bridge into Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

Richards rejected clemency for Montoya despite pleas from Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the Vatican.

Shortly before Leonel Herrera’s execution in 1993, a group of prominent Texas attorneys and former judges called on Richards to develop mechanisms so that condemned prisoners alleging miscarriages of justice would receive full and fair clemency hearings.

In the case of Herrera, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1993 that it was not unconstitutional to execute an innocent person. The Supreme Court stated that Herrera had received a fair trial, even if he was innocent. The judges also ruled that a defendant with a claim of innocence still has the opportunity to apply for executive clemency.

The only response from the governor’s office was a claim that she would “study” the group’s recommendations.

Herrera was executed that May.

During Richards’ four years as governor she increased the rate of Texas executions, essentially paving the way for her successor—George W. Bush—to triple her record.

Today, 12 years after she left office, the struggle against the death penalty is steadily growing. Proof of innocence has released 123 prisoners from death rows across the country, and these cases are changing hearts and minds.

Beginning Oct. 1, five men on Texas death row began a “starvation” hunger strike that is not scheduled to end until Jan. 1, 2007. “Our hearts are set on refusing to accept another morsel from an oppressive system that has no respect nor consideration for those they hold in captivity. There are five of us that stand so strong in our beliefs that we are willing to sacrifice our health and well being to show others the seriousness of our predicament. Our goals are to open the eyes of our fellow captives and society,” the prisoners state.

Neither Democratic nor Republican politicians are leading the fight for justice.

Death row prisoner Howard Guidry recently told Workers World from the county jail in Houston, “We activists, both inside and outside of the walls, are the leaders in the struggle for abolition. If we wait on politicians, it will never happen.”

Guidry spent ten years on Texas death row before a federal judge threw out his case in 2003 based on the fact that Houston police had refused to allow him an attorney. They forced the then-18-year-old to sign a confession to a crime he knew nothing about, even though he kept asking for his mother and for his attorney. His new trial is set for Jan. 29, 2007.

“We will end the death penalty and expose the systemic racism and injustice of the whole criminal justice system,” Guidry concluded. “I am not shedding any tears for Ann Richards. My tears are reserved for my comrades who were murdered by the state, like Kamau Wilkerson, Emerson Rudd and Shaka Sankofa, not for Ann Richards.”