Duane Buck case shows amnesia on Texas Death Penalty
The media appears to be in a bit of a frenzy over the recent Supreme Court halt on the death penalty case for Duane Edward Buck. Unfortunately, there is next to no mention of Victor Hugo Saldano. Saldano won his stay while Governor George W. Bush was still campaigning for president and John Cornyn was Attorney General for Texas.
The facts of Saldano and Buck's case are that under Bush and Cornyn, Dr. Walter Quijano testified at several capital murder cases where he offered supposedly professional, scientific testimony that because of many factors, including being Black or Hispanic, those two groups were "more worthy of the death penalty" due to "future dangerousness." The idea is that because Blacks and Hispanics are statistically more likely to be repeat offenders, this shows that if they are tried for capital murder, they inherently have the qualities you look for to favor the death penalty over a life sentence.
During Bush's campaign season, John Cornyn, now a US Senator, "acknowledged error" and decided to stop arguing the case before the Supreme Court, making a formal and final Supreme Court decision moot. This prevented a Supreme Court decision on an institutionalized racist policy. The more disturbing part of the history is that current Governor Rick Perry (who was Lt. Governor then) and current Attorney General of Texas Greg Abbott decided this case was actually worth arguing and validating before the Supreme Court. Somehow, making a psuedo-scientific argument in a United States court that Blacks and Hispanics are more worthy of the death penalty is legitimate to them.
Duane Buck's case was known to be a problem during the Saldano case. John Cornyn issued a press release on June of 2000, citing six remaining cases affected by Dr. Quijano's testimony. Since then, one of the men have been executed.
Gustavo Julian Garcia, Collin County, cause number 366-80185-91
Eugene Alvin Broxton, Harris County, cause number 599-218
John Alba , Collin County, cause number 219-81215-91 Executed May 25, 2010
Michael Dean Gonzales, Ector County, cause number D-23,730
Carl Henry Blue, Brazos County, cause number 23,293-272
Duane Buck, Harris County, cause number 699-684
In the past decade, this obvious throwback of justice was ignored by President Bush, Senator Cornyn, Governor Perry and Greg Abbott. When asked about the case back in 2000, Bush cited it as evidence that "the system is working."
When you do something this absurdly wrong, you double back and fix it - not double down in the hopes the world forgets just for the sake of execution.
The question is, will the public keep wiping this under the rug and will politicians who make the most aggregious defenses of a gross sense of justice and science continue to succeed?
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