WHAT DO you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. What do you call a single lawyer that falls asleep during his client's capital murder case? Joe Cannon.
Cannon's client, Calvin Jerold Burdine, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death row while his lawyer took a nap. For 16 years, Burdine sat on Texas's death row and filed appeals.
Last September, a federal judge overturned Burdine's conviction and gave the state 120 days to retry him. The state forgot, and U.S. District Judge David Hittner ordered that Burdine be released within five days. A potentially dangerous man could walk out of prison on Sunday because of legal system idiocy -- idiocy that holds the death penalty as its First Commandment.
Calvin Burdine doesn't know about any of the commandments. Burdine was convicted for stabbing and robbing his homosexual partner and roommate. The roommate was found with his hands and legs bound and a sock in his mouth. Burdine allegedly committed these crimes because his roommate asked him to become a male prostitute.
Since Burdine chose murder over prostitution, the Texas judiciary system decided to turn legal tricks on him. First, they assigned him homophobic and narcoleptic public defendant Joe Cannon. According to a fellow Texas attorney, Burdine's was not the first capital murder trial that Cannon slept through. Fortunately for all Texas murder defendants, Joe Cannon passed away recently so he could take a dirt nap.
Texas, the Jack Kevorkian of capital punishment states, already has killed ten criminals this year and has killed 209 since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 -- 134 more than the second most lethal state, Virginia (http://www.essential.org/dpic/dpicreg.html). If there is any state where lawyers should be required to stay awake, it's Texas. People could be executed because the public defendant had a heavy lunch.
Inefficiencies in Texas's legal system are driven by the state's focus on the death penalty. Gov. George W. Bush drives that focus. Bush repeatedly has denied reprieves and generally takes a hands-off attitude to his state's itchy trigger finger. It must be hard to worry about the life of a Texas inmate when you're palling around with reverends and ministers.
In fact, Bush is right when he says that he has little executive power in the area of capital punishment. Unlike most states, Texas's governor cannot stop an execution completely. Rather, he can order a one-time 30-day stay of execution. The governor does, however, appoint the parole board that makes these life and death decisions. As the most recognized leader in the state, he also sets the tone for all those that work under him.
"Discipline and love go hand in hand. If we want young Texans to learn to make correct choices, the consequences of bad behavior must be certain and clear," said Bush in his first gubernatorial inaugural address. He should have been honest and said, "If we want young Texans to learn to make correct choices, we must kill old Texans." As a result of such passionate statements, death-row grannies like Betty Beets are being fried in Texas while the governor prances around the country in a doomed presidential bid.
Leaders like Bush should lead. They shouldn't make impassioned pleas and then leave their constituents to figure out what they meant. That's the job of poets, not governors.
When Texas's Attorney General's office forgets to retry Calvin Burdine, it's Bush's fault. If Burdine decides to kill another of his "partners" after being released, that will be Bush's fault as well. And if Burdine ends up being executed without a fair trial -- yes, more blame for Bush. If nothing else, Bush is an exceptional scapegoat.
Bush wasn't even in office when Joe Cannon snoozed his way through a couple capital murder cases. Texas's tone might have been set before Bush became governor. Nonetheless, the thought of that tone resonating from the White House come January is disturbing.
Texas has been leading the execution brigade for a while. Bush's statement about showing young Texans the consequences of their actions is indicative of a greater problem in a culture that glorifies capital punishment -- a kill or be killed attitude. Joe Cannon almost killed his client, Calvin Burdine, by sleeping through a capital murder case. In the end, Burdine might be the one doing the killing while the Texas legal system continues to perish under the weight of its own stupidity.
(Chris DelGrosso's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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