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Texas
January 4, 2005
The state of Texas is scheduled to execute James Porter, a white man, Jan. 4 for the May 28, 2000, murder of Rudy Delgado, a Latino man. The murder took place while both men were serving time in prison at the Telford Unit in Bowie County. Porter was in prison for murder with a deadly weapon.
Porter, who has been called a white-supremacist, has reportedly maintained that his killing Delgado was honorable. He killed Delgado, a gay man, by bludgeoning him to death.
Porter asked U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield in federal district court to declare him mentally competent so that he could withdraw any further appeals of his conviction or sentence.
Texas has executed more people in the modern era than the next five states combined. The state has been under increased scrutiny for its handling of death penalty cases. In the past year, the Supreme Court has heard three appeals from inmates on death row in Texas, and in each case reversed the findings of the lower courts.
According to a recent New York Times article, legal experts maintain that the Supreme Court's decision to hear these cases demonstrates "its growing impatience with two of the courts that handle death penalty cases from Texas: its highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans."
The article also quoted Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote in June that the Fifth Circuit was "paying lip service to principles" regarding appellate law in upholding death sentences with "no foundation in the decisions of this court."
The Court of Appeals' apparent disregard for upholding justice coupled with the massive Houston Crime Lab scandal has caused many prominent Texans, including former Gov. Mark White, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, and State Senator John Whitmire - all death penalty proponents - to call for a moratorium of executions in Harris County.
Considering the existence of wide-scale problems such as crime lab scandals and flagrant disregard for international law Texas should not be in the business of state killing under any circumstances. Yet it continues to carry out death sentences.
Please take a moment to write Gov. Perry asking for a moratorium on all executions in Texas and to spare the life of James Scott Porter. Also, please write the Board of Pardons and Paroles asking them to recommend clemency in all cases considering the overwhelming turmoil within the state justice system pertaining to the death penalty.
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