Texas Democratic Party: Moving Texas Forward

HOUSTON — Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues surrounding capital punishment have rarely stirred such controversy.

On Sunday, Mark White, who as governor himself was a strong death penalty supporter, said he believed that the state should reconsider capital punishment because, among other reasons, there was too great a risk of putting innocent people to death.

“There is a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don’t look up one day and determine that we as the State of Texas have executed someone who is in fact innocent,” Mr. White, a Democrat who was governor from 1983 to 1987, told The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News.

Mr. White’s remarks came with Mr. Perry, a Republican and staunch backer of the death penalty, under criticism for not granting a 30-day reprieve to Cameron T. Willingham in 2004, when an arson expert working with Mr. Willingham’s defense concluded that the evidence that had put him on death row was seriously flawed.

Mr. White said he did not intend for his comments to be taken as criticism of Mr. Perry’s handling of the Willingham case. But, he said, the case is one example “of why I think the system is so unreliable.”

To read more go to the New York Times article.