The perfect Candidate has announced

[Benton]

(06-06-2015, 08:32 PM)bfine32 Wrote: No. You didn't answer how Perry abused his powers to force the execution.

If you want to go as far as to suggest he is guilty of murder, at least expound on how he abused his powers to orchestrate it.

All the evidence prior to the execution pointed to guilt, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. He was executed, 5 years later it is found that the guy may not have been guilty; so there are those far left few pointing a finger at Perry.

Perhaps Perry could have issued a 30 day stay, but I see no evidence how he abused his powers to ensure the man was executed. lease explain.

Perry was presented with a report that said the judicial system had failed and sentenced an innocent man to death. He ignored it. That's a negligent homicide. In Texas that's a 180-day to 2-year sentence. Given that he's an elected official, he's not going to be charged with anything, but the fear of that, or political ambition, led him to maneuver the end of the investigation that would have posthumously exonerated Willingham (and shown that Perry could have corrected the case). 

His failure to fulfill the duties of his office led to someone's death. And when that was coming to light, he abused his authority to either defer a criminal charge or to further his political career. Failure, death, abuse.

And as far as "all the evidence" that was the point of the report. The evidence was a persuaded testimony from a fellow inmate and the report that was proven incorrect at the time Perry entered the situation. He had "all the evidence" and ignored it.


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire

Quote:The vote was unanimous. Reaves could not offer an explanation: the board deliberates in secret, and its members are not bound by any specific criteria. The board members did not even have to review Willingham’s materials, and usually don’t debate a case in person; rather, they cast their votes by fax—a process that has become known as “death by fax.” Between 1976 and 2004, when Willingham filed his petition, the State of Texas had approved only one application for clemency from a prisoner on death row. A Texas appellate judge has called the clemency system “a legal fiction.” Reaves said of the board members, “They never asked me to attend a hearing or answer any questions.”


The Innocence Project obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, all the records from the governor’s office and the board pertaining to Hurst’s report. “The documents show that they received the report, but neither office has any record of anyone acknowledging it, taking note of its significance, responding to it, or calling any attention to it within the government,” Barry Scheck said. “The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”

...

What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

The whole article is a good read, but the nutshell as far as this is if Perry had been doing is job... if he had been able to govern a single state... then there would have at least been a realistic investigation. He didn't, a guy died and he's used his political abilities to make sure he's not the first governor to have to say, "Well, darn, I guess maybe we did kill the wrong guy."