Ma'at was the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Justice and Order. Her headdress ostrich feather served as the ultimate arbiter of the goodness of a man's life, and was balanced against a newly deceased person's heart on the scales of justice as a precondition of being permitted to pass into the Afterlife. Those whose hearts were heavy with wicked deeds had their souls devoured immediately by the demigod Ammin. Only those whose were lighter than Ma'at's feather were permitted to pass through into immortality with the Gods.
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Is Tomorrow "The Day" (And Ya'll Know What I Mean)
Governor Rick Perry of Texas has, following an extraordinarily rare recommendation from the Texas Board of Appeals, just commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, whose execution was scheduled to take place today.
The power of prayer, for those of us who have been praying. Since as many bloggers far better and less busy than I have noted, Foster's death sentence was unjust, based solely on what is known as "law of the parties" (in Texas), a twisted law which basically allows Texas to send someone to death for not being a soothsayer. The "law of the parties" -- the felony murder rule we lawyers all know and love (not) on steroids -- allows a death sentence to be imposed if an accomplice to a felony "should have anticipated" that a murder would occur during its commission.
This is not a case in which a completely innocent man is spared, and it is important to acknowledge that Foster did deserve punishment as the willing driver of a robbery get-away car. However, as was eloquently editorialized by newspapers in Texas this past weekend (not exactly what we would call a soft-on-crime state) there is a fundamental difference between deserving punishment for committing a crime and deserving the most extreme -- and permanent -- sanction of death. There is no question that Foster did not. He was neither the murderer nor someone who had advance warning that it was going to occur. As his own co-conspirators to robbery confirmed, Foster had no idea that his crew intended to kill anyone after they were done with their originally-planned robbery.
And it's not exactly justice to argue that a 19-year old (the age Kenneth Foster was at the time of the murder) "should have anticipated" that by agreeing to help drive a car for a robbery, he'd be sent to death for a murder he neither desired to commit or actually committed, which occurred nearly 100 feet away from him without warning, and which was committed by someone who (before *he* was executed by the State of Texas) admitted that nobody with him knew he was planning on murder when he approached the boyfriend of a woman who he just happened to be following to her neighborhood.
The most spectacular part of today's commutation is the language that Governor Perry used, in which he placed at issue not just this particular case, but the entire "joint trial" process for capital cases in Texas - a process which is inherently unfair to defendatns. He must not have had his Republican handlers vet that first, because it's rather impressive to this life-long opponent of the death penalty coming from the state that is at 400 executions as of just last week - and counting.
A special hat tip needs to go to Afrospear member Eddie Griffin who have tirelessly blogged and encouraged folks to blog and/or write to the Board of Paroles and Governor Perry and the media, to try and stop this injustice from occurring. I have not yet finished my diary for today, blogging for justice (relating to the Jena 6, another travesty of justice occurring), but it's still nice to be able to actually just SEE some justice, rather than Just Us, once in a while.
