"The dead innocent guy is the holy grail of abolitionists"

Look, the dead innocent guy is the holy grail of abolitionists. (Actually we have the dead innocent guy. He was Frank Lee Smith who died of cancer after 14 years on Florida's death row, and was exonerated by DNA - which identified the real killer -- 11 months later; the holy grail is the executed innocent guy.) They (we) believe that putting a name and face on an incontestably innocent guy who was executed will move people in a way little else can. And we (they) may be right.

But a concession that we screwed up, and we're not likely to see it from any quarter in Texas, may not be what we need. Heck, we came damn close to that from Governor Ryan in Illinois when he emptied death row, granting full pardons to four of the men there. The truth is that we probably need something more definitive for that particular grail.

But you know, Perry's political shenanigans may be almost as good. When the Governor so fears unleashing the truth that he's willing to be caught playing politics to hide it, we have a greater truth to which we can point.

If you fear what you might learn about Willingham, what about the next guy? If we're afraid to find out, aren't we implicitly saying this happens a lot? We may not have, right now, Willingham as a poster child for the executed innocent. We may have something better. Rick Perry (picured) as poster child for the recognition that they're out there. And he's scared.

I've said a lot that I don't know what happened to Willingham's kids. Neither does anyone else. I know there's no credible evidence Willingham killed them, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen (though it sure throws doubt on the prospect). But I know Perry is scared. We all know that, just as we know that Ohio officials are lying when they say we have a competent and capable execution team.

When government officials make it an official practice to hide from the truth and to deny the truth when confronted with it, when they do it so blatantly that everyone knows, the effect is that they admit it. And they reveal that even they don't believe in the very system they're hiding and lying to prop up.

I keep saying we need to face up to what we do. Public lying in so obvious a way is, paradoxically, facing up to the truth.

So the answer to who needs Rick Perry is that we do. His efforts to hide from the truth do more to make the truth convincing than his open embrace ever could.

Thanks, Rick.

Source: Excerpt from "Texas Two-Step", by Jeff Gamso, Gamso - For the Defense, October 2, 2009