Me smell another OJ case.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-supreme-court-stays-texas-execution-030508718.htmlThe US Supreme Court has halted the execution of a black man sentenced for two murders in a racially-charged trial in Texas, where White House hopeful Rick Perry has defended the death penalty.
Texas Department of Corrections officials told AFP that the execution of Duane Buck had been temporarily halted late Thursday, when he was to be put to death for the 1995 murder of his ex-girlfriend and another person.
Buck was praying in his cell when told of the decision, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman told reporters, quoting him as saying: "God is worthy to be praised. God's mercy triumphs over judgment, and I feel good."
Buck had already eaten his last meal of fried chicken, salad, French fries, fried fish, jalapeno peppers and apples, the Texas Tribune quoted the spokesman, Jason Clark, as saying.
Buck's execution had been set to take place Thursday after 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) in Huntsville, Texas.
The US Supreme Court or Texas Governor Rick Perry, currently the front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, had until midnight (0500 GMT) to authorize a stay.
Neither Buck's attorney nor prosecutors dispute his conviction for the double-murder, but they have argued that racial considerations factored into the sentencing phase of his trial.
"We are relieved that the US Supreme Court recognized the obvious injustice of allowing a defendant's race to factor into sentencing decisions and granted a stay of execution to Duane Buck," said his attorney Kate Black.
"No one should be put to death based on the color of his or her skin."
During the 1997 sentencing, psychologist Walter Quijano had testified that Buck was not likely to be dangerous because he had no previous violent record, but said blacks pose a greater risk of "future dangerousness" than whites.
Quijano had offered similar testimony in six other cases, in which defendants were later given new sentencing hearings.
Black, who had earlier requested a 30-day reprieve from both the court and Perry, said the court did not specify the length of the stay.
She said the 30-day reprieve was necessary to give state officials enough time to arrive at a solution to insure that the sentence "is determined through a process untainted by considerations of his race."
Prosecutor Linda Geffin asked Perry for a temporary stay of execution on Monday, saying that "no individual should be executed without being afforded a fair trial, untainted by considerations of race."
A staunch advocate of the death penalty, the Texas governor has seen 235 convicted felons executed during his 11 years in office, the most under any governor in modern times.
During a debate in Los Angeles last week, the ultraconservative candidate said to applause that he had "never struggled... at all" with the possibility that one of the detainees executed on his watch may have been innocent.
"If you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed," Perry said.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, whose members were all appointed by Perry, denied Buck's request for clemency on Wednesday, a move followed by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The denials came despite the fact that former Texas attorney general John Cornyn, now a Republican US senator, said there had been an "improper injection of race in the sentencing hearing in Mr Buck's case."
Topic: US Supreme Court stays race-tinged Texas execution (Read 381 times)