Bush Defends Texas Executions, Rejects Moratorium

His message of compassion usurped by the drama of an imminent execution in his home state, Texas Gov. George W. Bush insisted Wednesday that all 134 inmates put to death during his tenure were guilty and defended Texas’ accelerated pace of capital punishment as “fair and just.”

The putative Republican presidential nominee ruled out a moratorium on executions--such as that invoked by his GOP colleague in Illinois, Gov. George Ryan, after investigations there showed that at least a dozen innocent men had been wrongly confined to death row.

“As far as I’m concerned, there has not been one innocent person executed since I’ve been governor,” Bush told reporters at a campaign stop at the Puente Learning Center east of downtown Los Angeles. “The only thing I can say is I’ve analyzed each case. That’s my job. . . . I will continue to do so as long as I’m the governor.”

The scheduled execution tonight of Gary Graham, a convicted murderer who would become the 135th person to die by the state’s hand since Bush became governor in 1995, lent a somber tone to a day the governor meant to spend accenting his call for partnerships to help the less fortunate.

Graham’s case has exploded into a national controversy, driven by both the heat of an election year and doubts raised about his conviction, which rested solely on the testimony of one witness who saw the 1981 killing from dozens of feet away.

Death penalty protesters have dogged Bush this week, including two who infiltrated a Bush fund-raiser Tuesday night at a Los Angeles hotel, shouting “Don’t execute innocent men!” and unfurling signs before they were hustled out.

In an interview, Bush said that he welcomed a “healthy debate” over capital punishment but that his support was unflinching. In each case he has dealt with, he said, both the issues of guilt and of the trial’s fairness have been addressed to his satisfaction.

He dismissed the chance that Texas, like Illinois, might be incarcerating the innocent.

“I don’t believe we need a moratorium in the state of Texas,” he said, adding what became his mantra of the day, so often did he repeat it: “I’m going to continue to uphold the law of the land.”

In purely political terms, the death penalty has the potential to both help and hurt Bush, defining both elements of his professed “compassionate conservative” persona. His support of the death penalty firmly anchors him within the majority of Americans who back capital punishment--a group that includes future Democratic nominee Al Gore. Yet the assembly-line nature of Texas’ executions--the most regular in the nation--could prove troublesome, given what polls suggest are growing concerns about the guilt of convicted felons.

Ironically, given the latest dust-up, Bush’s hands may be tied on the Graham case. Texas law allows the governor to commute a capital sentence only if most of the 18-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends it. The board is due to announce its decision today.

A Texas governor can grant a onetime 30-day reprieve, as Bush did recently to allow DNA testing of another death row inmate. But Graham already won a reprieve from a previous governor, and Bush’s attorneys have told him that he cannot issue another.

Bush’s home state has come under fire for its justice system, and Bush himself has been criticized for vetoing a bill that would have set up public defenders’ offices--like those in California--to help indigent defendants.

At the time, he defended the current system under which defense attorneys are picked out of a pool by an administrative judge. Critics argue that those attorneys are, in effect, working at the pleasure of the court, compromising their adversarial role.

A recent Chicago Tribune investigation of the executions conducted during Bush’s tenure found that in 40 cases, defense attorneys presented either no evidence or only one witness during the trials’ sentencing phases. In almost four dozen cases, the lawyers trying to spare the lives of capital defendants had been or were later disbarred or sanctioned.

In the interview, Bush discounted the investigation.

“It’s easy to lump these cases into broad categories,” he said. “The only thing that I can tell you is I’ve analyzed each case that’s come across my desk. . . . I’m satisfied that each case I’ve looked at has fulfilled the requirements.”

While his powers in the Graham case are limited, Bush was doing his best Wednesday to project a thoughtful concern about the matter. He said he is studying the case, although he said in the interview he is unsure whether he would discuss his personal views on the case even after the board announces its decision.

But even as he publicly welcomed a national discussion about the death penalty, he appeared reluctant to discuss how such a life-and-death matter weighed on him. Asked specifically how he was faring as the Graham case was propelled to perhaps its final day, Bush said that he was consulting with his attorneys regularly.

“I understand the emotions of the death penalty, I do,” he said, giving no window into his own. “My job is to uphold the laws of the state of Texas.”

The governor was far more passionate about his favored theme of the day. At the Puente Learning Center, a privately funded facility that teaches students ranging from preschool to adult, he proposed an $80-million program that would provide matching grants to develop community technology centers in poor areas. He also said he would start a “compassionate capital fund” to provide money for neighborhood-based charities.

“The American dream belongs to everybody,” he told students at the center, which serves a largely Latino area. “. . . There is a responsibility in our society for those who have been fortunate to help those who are coming up.”

Bush left Los Angeles for Houston, where he attended a fund-raiser and spoke to the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists. The governor, who has campaigned relentlessly among Latinos, said in Los Angeles that he is working to “reconfigure” the GOP base in a state where Republican leaders have often been knocked as anti-immigrant.

“I set a different tone, a different attitude, to the newly arrived,” he said.

A Field Poll released earlier this week showed Gore with a substantial lead overall in California and a better than 2-to-1 lead among Latinos.