Rick Perry's Cowboy Certainty
Clarence Page

Quite a few people were shocked to hear the audience burst into applause at Rick Perry's first Republican presidential debate after they heard that the Texas governor leads the nation in executions. That's why we have debates. They teach you things, not only about the candidates but also about their voters.

The applause came after NBC's Brian Williams said, "Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times."

Many were horrified that the conservative Republican audience in the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Southern California would break out in applause. But what do you expect from a politically minded crowd in the Reagan library, a shrine to cowboy conservatism? I was only surprised that they didn't jump to their feet, cheer and slap high fives with one another.

When the applause died down enough for Williams to ask his question, he continued: "Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?" No, sir, said Perry.

"I've never struggled with that at all," he said, because Texas has "a very thoughtful, a very clear process" in which the accused "get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required."

Yet, alas, the state's record under his governorship -- and prior to it -- reveals quite a bit to make you toss and turn a bit, provided you have a conscience.

Texas has long been known to execute more criminals than any other state, which would not be nearly as troubling if the record didn't show the pattern of fairness and double-checking to be so haphazard.

Williams' question might well have been generated by the most infamous case under Perry's watch: Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for the home fire that killed his three daughters.

Despite serious questions raised by fire scientists about the questionable forensics used in the arson investigation and the twice-recanted testimony of a jailhouse snitch, Perry refused to grant even a 30-day reprieve requested by Willingham's lawyers to present their case.

Adding further drama, a scathing 2009 report by The New Yorker's David Grann moved the state's forensic science commission to hold hearings, but Perry replaced three members of the commission. The new chair canceled the hearing and did not take up the Willingham case again until the following April -- a month after Perry won the Republican primary. Perry denies allegations that he tried to quash the case. I'm more concerned at his apparent disregard for pursuing the truth, possibly at the cost of an innocent man's life.

He has granted only 31 death row commutations, 28 of which resulted from a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning capital punishment for minors, according to a database of state executions compiled by the Texas Tribune. The data also show a high number of executions of people who were minors when they committed their crimes, people who were mentally unable to understand their punishment, and people who received questionable counsel.

Those are hardly new concerns. A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2000 found such bizarre cases as Death Row inmates represented by an attorney who slept at trial and capital cases based on such unreliable evidence as jail-house informants and the visual comparison of hairs.

Yet, if Perry isn't losing a lick of sleep over these cases, it is largely because, as he said when Williams asked his thoughts on the "dynamic" that brought applause to the very mention of Perry's execution record: "I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of cases, supportive of capital punishment."

He may be right about that, at least in our politics. Neither party has wanted to appear soft on capital punishment in a presidential race since 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, a bold opponent of executions, went down to defeat.

But, it is Perry's certainty that I find most troubling. It is the same certainty about Texas' executions that was expressed by his predecessor as governor, George W. Bush, when he ran for president in 2000.

It sounds like the same certainty that thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that American troops would be greeted with flowers as liberators.

And I am certain that most of my fellow Americans "understand justice" should mean, first and foremost, punishment of the guilty, not just those whom we hope are guilty.