One more reason why I support the death penalty:

Huntsville (TX) prison guard killed during escape; both inmates recaptured

There’s a lot of folk on the anti-side who think that we should just lock these dangerous animals up for the rest of their lives instead of putting them to death for their capital murders.

The problem with that is that good, honest, and innocent people have to guard them, provide them medical care, feed them, and counsel them. And every so often, if given even a moments opportunity, they will kill these innocent people too.

Neither of these men were on death row — one of them, Jerry Duane Martin, 37, was serving 50 years for two charges of attempted capital murder. Now that he has committed capital murder, hopefully his death sentence will be carried out quickly.

The other escapee, John Ray Falk Jr., 40, was serving a life sentence for murder. Now that he has also committed a capital murder, his next stop should be death row.

Their victim was 59-year old Officer Susan Canfield. She died from injuries she received when the escapees rammed her horse and ran her over as they fled the Wynne Unit crop fields in a stolen truck, prison officials said.

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Recently here in Texas the case of Kenneth Foster made national news.

Foster was on death row for his part in the 1996 robbery and murder of a 25-year old man in San Antonio. Foster was not the gun man, and didn’t pull the trigger. Instead one of his fellow Black Disciples gang members, Mauriceo Brown pulled the trigger. Foster drove the car, and was responsible for stalking and terrorizing the victims before they were eventually shot.

Foster had been sentenced to death under the Law of Parties:

Chapter 7.02 of the TX Penal Code says a person can be criminally responsible for another’s actions if that person acts with “the intent to promote or assist the commission of the offense” and “solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit the offense, whether the defendant actually caused the death of the deceased or did not actually cause the death of the deceased but intended to kill the deceased or another or anticipated that a human life would be taken”. Furthermore, “If, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed.”

Foster’s death sentence, unfortunately, was commuted by Gov. Rick Perry.

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I bring up the case of Kenneth Foster only to remind people of why we have the Law of Parties — and it’s for instances like the first story of the two escaped inmates. Now, only one of them was driving the truck that killed Officer Canfield. However, both men should be charged with and convicted of capital murder in her death.

Hopefully the Foster case hasn’t set a precedent where one of these men will not be put on death row and thus given another future chance at killing someone else.

Anybody who argued against Foster being put to death because he wasn’t the trigger man, can you argue that one of the men who ran over that guard should not also be convicted of capital murder just because he wasn’t behind the wheel?

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 | Trackback |