Three men will be executed in Texas this week. By the end of 2007, there will have been 400 executions in that
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Despite growing opposition in the United States to the racist death penalty, the rate of executions has not let up in Texas.
Tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 30, Kenneth Foster, a young African American man, is scheduled for execution for a crime that even prosecutors say he did not commit. But he is a victim of the “Law of Parties,” a state law that makes a person equally liable as the one who actually commits a murder.
Foster’s case has generated wide publicity for the circumstances of his unjust sentence. He is set to be executed for driving a car during an attempted robbery that left Michael LaHood Jr. dead. The person who shot and killed LaHood, Mauriceo Brown, was executed in July 2006. Brown admitted that Foster had no knowledge of the shooting and did not take part in it.
There is an emergency campaign of letters to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Texas governor and state legislature. Click here to send a letter today.
Although four states have laws that make a person not directly responsible for a crime liable if he or she was present during the commission of that crime, only Texas makes it a potentially capital crime.
For information on Foster’s case, click here.
The death penalty is a weapon used almost exclusively against poor and working-class people in the United States. In Texas, it is applied with a vengeance.
PSLweb.org readers are urged to send letters of opposition to Foster’s execution right away. Click here to send a letter.
Stop the execution of Kenneth Foster! End the racist death penalty!
