Save Kenneth Foster!

Kenneth's New Address

2007-09-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Foster Jr. #1451768
Mcconnell Unit
3001 South Emily Drive
Beeville, TX 78102

September 13, 2007

Kenneth Foster to Remain in Solitary Confinement Despite Commuted Sentence

Supporters of former Texas death row inmate Kenneth Foster, Jr. learned today that he will remain in solitary confinement indefinitely at the McConnell Unit in Beeville. He has been placed at the lowest security level, meaning he has the highest amount of restrictions on his daily activities. He will only be allowed two visits per month and will not have contact visits.

Family and supporters of Foster had expected that his commutation would result in looser restrictions on his visitations. Specifically, they had hoped he would be able to have contact visits with his wife, Tasha Narez-Foster, and his daughter, Nydesha Foster. Foster has never had physical contact with his wife and has not touched his daughter since she was an infant.

“This is a very discouraging development,” said Lily Hughes of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, “Obviously, we are happy that Kenneth is no longer on death row, but the fact that he is living under basically the same conditions as death row is unacceptable.” Inmates on Texas’ death row live in 22-hour lockdown and do not have contact visits with family.

Foster was scheduled to be executed on August 30 for the murder of Michael LaHood, Jr. in San Antonio. Foster did not shoot the gun that ended LaHood’s life, but was driving the car carrying the actual triggerman, Mauriceo Brown. Foster was convicted and sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, which allows the state to seek convictions for those present at the scene of a crime as if they committed it. Since Foster’s original trial, the other men in the car that night have testified that Foster had no idea LaHood would be shot.

Foster’s case generated widespread international attention over the summer, mainly due to the Austin-based movement against his execution. Formed in May, the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign held weekly meetings, public rallies, and contacted media in an effort to halt Foster’s impending execution.

Approximately six hours before Foster was to be put to death, Governor Rick Perry approved the Board of Pardons and Paroles’ 6-1 recommendation in favor of clemency. "I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” Perry said in a statement following the commutation, “I am concerned about Texas law that allows capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously, and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine."

A New Message from Kenneth!

2007-09-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

I wanted to sit down and address a few people directly, because I think it's important to give thanks to those that made this victory possible. If it wasn't for certain people I know I would not be alive today.

First and foremost, I give praise and thanks to The Most High for giving me the strength to carry on through all these years for I know that I didn't do it by myself. I've watched too many men give up, condemn themselves, mutilate themselves, try to commit suicide and then there was those that did commit it. When we say that we live in a hell the description is pretty close. I didn't just start praying when I got this date. I've been striving towards spiritual attainment for a LONG time. But, prayer takes time and it does work.

Without the support and love of my grandparents and Uncle Lloyd I wouldn't be here. They've been the rock foundation to my house since DAY ONE! There were here when it started and they were here at the end. Much of who I am today is because of them and I have a life long service of betterment dedicated to them.

And to my daughter for being the warrior princess she is. Her love made and kept me.

I have to give an unmatched love to my wife who has been by my side for over 2 years now; a person whom when was hated on she just found a way to dig in harder! No relationship is perfect, but through the fire we just become more purified. We've rolled with all the punches and if we've made it this far then there is no stopping or turning back.

Much love to my dad for stepping up when it counted. The same to my cousin Beverly Fisher whom rallied the troops. Big love to all my cousins, Aunts and Uncles that came to my side. You all touched my heart in a MAJOR way. Thank you for being there, because your vibes kept me positive.

Then I've got to give HUGE props to my good friend Adam Axel for doing amazing things. This young man has done some things that probably many of you don't realize. This guy was literally like a central command for me. You all have no idea. He acted as a central station to get me messages/letters/printouts/emails/updates from all over the world. Almost weekly I was getting 100 page Fed-X packages. Outside of the general campaign work he went above and beyond what was expected. I was definitely blessed to have you on my side. Outside of the work he kept me level headed and inspired. He's got a great future ahead of him.

And have no doubts about it I have to extend gigantic revolutionary greetings to the vanguard of the anti-death penalty movement the CEDP! These people are gladiators when it comes to grassroots activism and they definitely were the force behind this frontline. Bryan McCann you definitely helped us move mountains, and the whole Austin crew (Randi, Stefanie, Laura, Dana and the other comrades). We did this from Coast to Coast - made the people hear us. These other so called anti death penalty groups need to take some notes from how this group moves and functions for if they followed suit we may be able to abolish this death penalty very shortly. Just think that if all the anti death penalty groups moved in this fashion. It's time to revamp their strategies. Use the CEDP as an example they ARE the vanguard.

While there's no other groups that I can extend that type of thanks to there are individuals of groups that I'd like to thank for showing me some great support and solidarity. Big props goes to Steve Hall for making some big things happen. Thanks to Scott Cobb for holding an event on my behalf and also to Dave Atwood for being there. All of this played a role in this victory.

And from the top of my heart let me say that the love and support of Mary Felps and her crew helped me get where I am today. I was visited weekly by JoAnne Scott. They did to the best of their ability all they could for me. Much of that credit goes to her assistant JoAnne who mailed, typed, editted and so on. She definitely was a crutch that held me up. She is also the person that got Sean Paul Kelley on our team. Mary did amazing work through writing folks and did me a great service through an Amicus for Clemency to the Parole Board. There's much more too, but some things I'll just be taking to the grave with me one day (smile). They are amazing people.

I want to end with giving respect to some media channels that did me a great service: Pacifica, Forth Worth Star Telegram, Austin Statesman, Dallas Morning News. I want to specially thank KXAN for covering this story in a fair way. They were very much the professionals. I think these people gave extra support my way and they must know that I'm not going to let them down. There was so many petitions that I can't name them all.

I must give much love to June and her Italian Film crew who tirelessly covered this fight. To Chiara and the crew - I love you all too. I know I'm missing some folks by name but I got you in my heart. I especially got those in my heart that some of you never knew, but has been here for years like my god-mum Christine in England who helped me know love in new ways. Petra with ALIVE in germany. Grazia with PRC in Italy, who helped me with Sheila Murphy.

And yes, I owe Sheila Murphy so much for if nothing else being a spiritual friend. But she did an amazing Amicus Brief and we all owe ArchBishop Desmond Tutu so much love for supporting us. My French girls did amazing things - Emilie, Vi, Fatou, Kadia. Can't leave out my amazing web-master Ms. Jennie. That site was the heart of this body and she ran it like a pro! This has turned into a book, but it was necessary. My heart in overflooded with love and gratitude.

I haven't forgotten you, Keith Hampton. Though you gave me the blues on more occasions than I can name you stuck in there and kept me alive for 10 years where I could build this support team that helped make this happen. I've seen guys get to death row AFTER me and be done with their appeals and executed in 6 years. So, I'm thankful for the motions, supplements, Certs, motions (again,) rehearings etc.. that you filed.

Let it be known that I'm still not done fighting. As I've said as long as I have breath then freedom is within my grasp. I fully believe that it is not my destiny to spend the rest of these years in prison, though I know that being here for a minute is part of what I was called to do. My place is out there with you all working for this Struggle. For now I will do it from within here. But trust me, my gears have not stopped spinning on how to gain my freedom. (You should see the smile on my face right now.) I exit this message with nothing but love on my lips, but you will hear from me again. I have a new environment to adjust to, but I won't let one minute slip past me. I have so much that I want to pursue and do. And it will be done!

Peace, Love and Respect to you all.

Somebody send Mr. Rick Perry a complimentary DRIVE tshirt for me as a token of my deep gratitude!

Always, your soldier on the battlefield!

Kenneth

A Message From the Fosters

2007-08-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, Family and supporters,

Oh my God, where to start. We are estatic, overwhelmed and full of smiles!
Finally the Death row nightmare is over, no more seeing him from
behind glass- soon we will be able to hug him. Nydesha will be able
to hug him :-)

Without all the hard work from all of you- it would have not been
possible. You guys worked around the clock, made the calls, wrote the
letters, marched with us, signed petitions, helped us organize,
contacted the media and made this cross bareable for us.

We thank God for having you all. We won guys- and all because of the
fantastic team work!!!!!

We love you all!

Tasha & Kenneth
Kenneth Sr & Lawrence

VICTORY!!!!

2007-08-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2007

Movement to Save Kenneth Foster Wins Historic Victory

Family members and supporters of Kenneth Foster, Jr. are jubilant in the reaction to Texas Governor Rick Perry's today's announcement today that he would commute the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, who was convicted under the controversial "Law of Parties" for a 1996 murder in which he had no actual involvement. The Board of Pardons and Paroles had recommened clemency by a vote of 6-1. Foster's execution had been scheduled for tonight.

In a statement announcing the commutation, Perry said, "I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the Legislature should examine."

Reaction among Foster's family and friends included both joy and disbelief. “We felt a bit of disbelief because Perry’s decision was so unprecedented.” said Dana Cloud of the Save Kenneth Foster campaign. “But everyone is so happy that Kenneth will be able to touch his wife and daughter and that we have a chance of seeing him free. Anything is possible when you are alive.”

Claire Dube, a close high-school friend of Kenneth’s and an active member of the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign, broke into tears when she heard the news. “We don’t even know what to say. It’s incredible.”

Keith Hampton, Foster’s attorney, also expressed relief and happiness at winning his client’s life. Hampton thanked the activists of the grassroots movement that started in Austin and spread around the world for putting the necessary pressure on the Board and the Governor to win. “Extra-legal means work,” he said.

“Governor Perry once said that there was no hue and cry against the death penalty in Texas,” commented Lily Hughes of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. “Well, here was your hue and cry.”

Foster’s family and other supporters will continue to work to free him from prison. “It seems like ten years on death row under 23-hour lockdown could amount to time served for any crime that Kenneth ever committed,” Cloud said.

Perry’s decision is historic. Not only has the Board of Pardons and Paroles rarely recommended clemency (by one count, 3 times since 1982), but Rick Perry has overseen more executions than any Governor of the State of Texas, including George Bush.

“This case demonstrated to the world just how arbitrary and capricious capital punishment is,” Cloud said. “It gives people pause when someone who killed no one could come this close to being executed.”

“Public sentiment has been turning against capital punishment,” Hughes said. “We’ve seen a lot of states stop executing people. Winning Kenneth’s life might be a real turning point in the history of the death penalty in Texas.”

###

UPDATE: Board Votes in Kenneth's Favor, All Eyes on Perry

2007-08-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

The Board of Pardons and Paroles today voted 6-1 to recommend clemency for Kenneth Foster. It is now up to Governor Perry to make the final decision. Call him and demand that he do the right thing:

Call 800-252-9600 (Texas callers) or 512-463-1782 (Austin and out of state), and send faxes to 512-463-1849.

No News Yet

2007-08-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

It is about 10:30 a.m. central time and there is still no word from the Board of Pardons and Paroles or the U.S. Supreme Court. Executions in Texas typically begin at 6 p.m.

Kenneth's Story in the New York Times and London Independent

2007-08-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2007

Date With the Executioner for Murder by Someone Else

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Aug. 29 — Kenneth Foster has a date on Thursday with the executioner’s needle. Not for killing anyone himself but for what he was doing — and may have been thinking — the night in 1996 when he was 19 and a sidekick pulled the trigger, killing a 25-year-old San Antonio law student.

Ensnared in a Texas law that makes accomplices subject to the death penalty, Mr. Foster, 30, is to become the third death row inmate this week, and the 403rd since capital punishment resumed in Texas in 1982, to give his life for a life taken.

But unlike most others condemned to death in this state, Mr. Foster, a onetime gang member, aspiring musician and prison poet from San Antonio, is not a murderer in the usual sense. He was convicted and sentenced to die for abetting a killing — 80 feet away — that he may, or may not, have had reason to anticipate.

The man who pulled the trigger is dead, executed last year. One accomplice is serving life in prison as a result of a plea bargain, and a second is serving life for a separate murder.

Now, failing a last-minute reprieve, Mr. Foster, the group’s driver in a robbery spree — who argues that he never was party to the murder — is facing lethal injection. His guilt, affirmed so far in every appeal, including five turned away by the United States Supreme Court, hinges in large part on difficult questions of awareness and intention.

Other states hold co-conspirators responsible for each other’s criminal acts in a so-called law of parties. But few of those have a death penalty. And no other state executes them on the scale of Texas.

With polls showing capital punishment still enjoying majority support in Texas and around the country, but by dwindling margins, the Foster case has spurred vigils and protests from abroad to the death house in Huntsville, as well as a backlash by victim’s rights advocates who still mourn the slain law student, Michael LaHood Jr.

It has also smudged concepts of guilt and innocence. If Mr. Foster is not legally guilty of murder, as his lawyer, Keith S. Hampton, and supporters contend, many find it hard to pronounce him blameless.

“I’d hate to use the word innocent,” said his father, Kenneth Foster Sr., a former heroin addict who told a church audience in Houston Saturday that he used to take his baby son with him on drug runs and petty crimes. He said his son “should be punished to some degree, but not put to death.”

At the heart of the case is Texas’s law of parties under which those conspiring to commit one felony such as a robbery can all be held responsible for an ensuing crime, like murder, if it “should have been anticipated.”

In 1982, in Edmund v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court found that the Constitution barred the death penalty for co-conspirators who do not themselves kill. But five years later in Tison v Arizona, the justices carved out an exception, ruling that the Eighth Amendment did not forbid execution of a defendant “whose participation in a felony that results in murder is major and whose mental state is one of reckless indifference.”

According to evidence in the case, on the afternoon of Aug. 14, 1996, Mr. Foster had borrowed his grandfather’s rented white Chevy Cavalier and was driving three companions — Julius Steen, Dewayne Dillard, and Mauriceo Brown — on a robbery spree through San Antonio. Mr. Steen and Mr. Brown, with Mr. Dillard’s gun, held up four people.

After midnight, they trailed two cars to a street where Mr. LaHood had just driven home, followed by a companion, Mary Patrick. She and Mr. Steen exchanged some remarks. Mr. Brown took the gun, chased Mr. LaHood and shot him dead. Ms. Patrick later characterized it as a robbery.

Mr. Foster and his companions fled but were soon stopped by the police. Mr. Foster denied participating in the earlier robberies or the shooting, claiming the group had been out looking for clients for his music business.

He was tried together with Mr. Brown, who was also convicted and was executed in July 2006. Mr. Steen and Mr. Dillard, facing charges in other cases, were not tried. But Mr. Steen testified he did not believe that Mr. Foster knew that Mr. LaHood would be robbed, although Mr. Steen said, “I would say I kind of thought it.”

Later Mr. Dillard testified in Mr. Foster’s appeals, claiming that before they reached the LaHood house, Mr. Foster sought to end the night’s spree so he could return the car to his grandfather. Therefore, Mr. Fuller’s lawyer, Mr. Hampton, argued, his client lacked the mindset to be legally culpable for the killing that followed.

Mr. Hampton also contended that Mr. Steen and Mr. Dillard were improperly withheld as crucial witnesses, and that mitigating testimony about Mr. Foster’s upbringing was not presented to the jury.

“I was in jail at the time he got arrested,” said Kenneth Foster Sr., saying that a strategy of portraying his son as churchgoing and well-raised had backfired.

“One of the jurors said he should have known better,” the elder Mr. Foster said. “They never called me. If the mitigating evidence had been put on, he never would be on death row.”

Man faces execution for being in car with killer

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Published: 30 August 2007

A 30-year old man, Kenneth Foster, is set to be executed today for a murder which he not only did not commit, but which the authorities in Texas accept was carried out by another man in 1996.

The trial judge, the prosecutor, and the jury that sentenced Mr Foster to die admit that he did not murder the victim Michael LaHood. But, under a controversial "law of parties", in Texas an associate of a perpetrator can be found co-responsible in a capital case. The law imposes the death penalty on anybody involved in a crime where a murder occurred.

This is how Foster, a black man out on a crime spree with some friends, came to be convicted of murdering Mr LaHood, a white man and the son of a prominent lawyer . The killer, Mauriceo Brown, was executed last year.

Foster has been politically active on death row. He has organised fellow prisoners, becoming a leader in the anti-death penalty movement in Texas and starting a non-violent movement called Drive, to campaign over conditions on death row. Unlike most other inmates he had several years of college education before jail.

On the night of the murder, Foster and several friends had been driving around drinking and committing robberies. On the way home, Brown left the car to talk to a woman. He then got into an altercation with Mr LaHood and shot him dead in the driveway of his house in San Antonio.

The murder occurred as Foster was sitting in a car some 30 metres away with three other passengers – but prosecutors said there was a conspiracy to commit the crime and therefore he deserved a death sentence. Since Foster's original trial, the other passengers – none of whom was tried under the law of parties – have testified that Foster had no idea a shooting was going to take place.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Foster's final appeal on Tuesday and his last recourse is a pardon from Texas Governor Rick Perry. This seems unlikely, as five of the seven Board of Pardons members must recommend clemency first. Last week Texas executed its 400th prisoner since it resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Recently a friend of the victim has described the pending execution as vengeance and called for it to be halted. The LaHood family has so far not offered support to Foster's case. LaHood's mother said she supported the execution of the actual killer.

Amnesty International Statement in Support of Keneth

2007-08-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGUSA20070824002

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
PRESS RELEASE

August 24, 2007

Kenneth Foster Execution a 'New Low for Texas' and a 'Shocking Perversion of the Law,' Says Amnesty International
Foster Convicted For a Murder He Did Not Commit or Predict; Human Rights Organization Calls on Texas Board of Pardons, Gov. Perry to Grant Clemency

(Washington, D.C.) -- Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today condemned the scheduled August 30 execution of Kenneth Foster, who was convicted of a murder he did not commit and has consistently denied knowing would occur. The human rights organization has mobilized its international membership to urge the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Rick Perry to grant clemency.

Foster was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Michael LaHood under Texas' controversial "law of parties." This law abolishes the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime and allows both to be held equally culpable.

"This is a new low for Texas," said Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA. "Texas has the most far-reaching 'law of parties' in this country, further marking it as the death penalty capital of the United States. In essence, Kenneth Foster has been sentenced to death for leaving his crystal ball at home. There is no concrete evidence demonstrating that he could know a murder would be committed. Allowing his life to be taken is a shocking perversion of the law."

In the early hours of August 15th, 1996, Mauriceo Brown, DeWayne Dillard, Julius Steen and Kenneth Foster stopped outside the house of Michael LaHood. Brown got out of the car, robbed LaHood, and then shot him. To convict Kenneth Foster of capital murder under the law of parties, the prosecution had to prove that there was a conspiracy between him and Brown to rob LaHood, and that Foster should have anticipated that murder might have occurred during the robbery. At the trial Brown testified that there had been no discussion of robbing LaHood before he got out of the car.

Dillard testified at a state appeal that after the shot was heard, Foster had appeared surprised and panicked. Steen signed an affidavit in 2003 stating that, "There was no agreement that I am aware of for Brown to commit a robbery at the LaHood residence. I do not believe that Foster and Brown ever agreed to commit a robbery. I don't think that Foster thought that Brown was going to commit a robbery."

Brown was executed on July 19, 2006. Neither Steen nor Dillard, the two other accomplices, was prosecuted for LaHood's murder. Yet, as the evidence stands today, their and Foster's culpability in the crime appears to be the same.

Contact: Wende Gozan at 212/633-4247 or Brian Evans at 202/544-0200 x496

Austin-American Statesman Publishes Another Editorial in Favor of Kenneth

2007-08-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

EDITORIAL

Another stain on justice, Texas style

EDITORIAL BOARD

Click-2-Listen

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Gov. Rick Perry can spare a life, uphold justice and bring a semblance of honor to Texas this week, if only he will seize the opportunity.

Perry has the power to stop the execution of death row inmate Kenneth Foster, scheduled to die Thursday for a crime everyone acknowledges that he did not commit. The state's Board of Pardons and Paroles also can halt the execution.

Foster, 30, is not the sweetheart anti-death penalty activists insist he is. He was a thug, armed robber and drug dealer in San Antonio. But he did not commit the murder that put him on death row.

Foster was driving the car with three criminal friends on a robbery spree the night Michael LaHood, 25, was shot and killed in 1996. One of Foster's passengers, Mauriceo Brown, shot LaHood in the face during an attempted robbery. Brown was executed for that crime last year.

Foster was convicted under Texas' Law of Parties statute that considers those who had a major role in a capital crime as guilty as the actual killer. Texas is the only state that applies the Law of Parties to capital crimes, and an estimated 80 death row inmates have been condemned to die under that statute.

Foster and the others in the car with him say Foster had no idea Brown would kill LaHood. But prosecutors and a jury said Foster should have known that Brown intended to shoot LaHood and should have prevented it.

The inescapable problem with the Law of Parties is that a jury has to go back in time and read the defendant's mind, guess at his intention. The sentence is based on what the jury believed Foster was thinking when the crime occurred. No one's life should hinge on guesswork by jurors.

A federal district judge overturned the death sentence in 2005 after determining that Foster didn't play a major role in the conspiracy to rob LaHood. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court and reinstated the death sentence in 2006. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Foster's appeal.

So now it's up to Perry or the Board of Pardons and Paroles to do the right thing and spare Foster's life by granting him a reprieve. It's the only just thing to do. If the governor or parole board allows this execution, Texas will be further stained by injustice.

Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, Texas has executed 400 people, far more than any other state. That's more than a third of all the 1,100 executions in the United States in that same period.

Everyone can sympathize with LaHood's family and share their grief at their loss. But granting Foster a reprieve in no way endangers this state's embrace of the death penalty or threatens to turn a cold-blooded killer loose on the streets.

It only assures that one man is not put to death for a crime committed by someone else. It's simple justice.

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/08/29/0829foster_edit.html

Two More Texas Papers (Dallas Morning News and Waco Tribune) Come Out in Favor of Kenneth

2007-08-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Not a Killer: Kenneth Foster does not deserve execution
09:33 AM CDT on Sunday, August 26, 2007

Kenneth Foster was a robber. He was a drug user. He was a teenager making very bad decisions.

He is not an innocent man.

But Mr. Foster is not a killer.

Still, the State of Texas plans to put him to death Thursday.

Ours is the only state in the country to apply the "law of parties" to capital cases, allowing accomplices to pay the ultimate penalty for a murder committed by another. Mr. Foster was driving his grandfather's rental car when one of his partners in crime killed Michael LaHood.

That night in 1996, Mr. Foster and three of his buddies appeared to be looking for trouble. They robbed a few folks, chugged some beers and smoked marijuana. But, as all four have testified, murder was never part of the plan. Mr. Foster and two others sat in the car nearly 90 feet away when the fatal shot was fired.

They had followed an attractive woman into an unfamiliar neighborhood, where they encountered her boyfriend, Mr. LaHood. The other passengers have testified that they had no designs on robbing – let alone shooting – him. And the admitted triggerman said that his friends did not know what he was doing when he approached the victim.

But using the law of parties, prosecutors argued that Mr. Foster, who was 19 at the time, either intended to kill or "should have anticipated" a murder. For this lack of foresight, he has been sentenced to death.

The death penalty, proponents argue, is the appropriate punishment for the worst of the worst criminals. They express confidence that death row inmates are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the case against Mr. Foster falls far short on both counts.

A 19-year-old robber/getaway driver cannot be classified as one of Texas' most dangerous, murderous criminals. On this point, even prosecutors agree: Mr. Foster did not kill anyone.

By applying the law of parties to this capital case, prosecutors are asking jurors to speculate on whether he should have anticipated the murder. Conjecture isn't nearly good enough when a defendant's life is on the line.

And relying on a mind-reading jury leaves plenty of room for reasonable doubt.

Several other states have imposed or are considering a moratorium on executions, relying instead on life without parole as a tough alternative. Even though Texas juries now have the option of life without parole, our state continues to broadly impose capital punishment.

The unfair application of the death penalty and the possibility that an innocent man could be executed compelled this newspaper to voice opposition to capital punishment. This case only reinforces our belief that state-sanctioned death is often arbitrary.

While Mr. Foster's execution date approaches, the two passengers from his car sit in prison with life sentences. His only hope for a reprieve lies with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and the governor.

This case raises serious questions about whether state leaders are comfortable with this degree of ambiguity in death cases. We aren't.

Mr. Foster is a criminal. But he should not be put to death for a murder committed by someone else.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Texas is the only state that applies the "law of parties" to capital cases, allowing accomplices who "should have anticipated" a murder to receive the death penalty. Kenneth Foster is scheduled to die Thursday under this provision. You can urge the governor to stop the execution.

Write the governor:
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428

E-mail the governor through his Web site:
www.governor.state.tx.us/contact

Call the governor's opinion hotline:
1-800-252-9600

========================

Lamar Hankins, guest column: Executing this man is bloodlust, not justice

Sunday, August 26, 2007

You might have missed the story. After all, the football season is starting, and we had all the excitement of a tax-free weekend.

But Texas is about to execute an innocent man, that is, a man who killed no one, who did not want to kill anyone, who did not help kill anyone.

On these points, there is unanimous agreement between all the parties involved. How could this happen in Texas?

Kenneth Foster is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection Thursday for a murder committed by Mauriceo Brown, a friend of Foster who was executed for murder last year.

The incident in question is the murder of Michael LaHood. In an altercation, Brown pulled a gun and shot LaHood. Brown testified that LaHood had drawn a gun on him first. Whatever happened, it is undisputed that Foster sat in the car 80 feet away from the shooting.

There is no evidence that Foster had felonious intent. When he heard the shot, he started to drive off before Brown got back in the car, a fact kept from the jury.

Part of what got Foster charged with capital murder is a legal concept known as “the law of parties.”

In Texas, a person is responsible for the criminal conduct of another if he intentionally assists the other in committing a crime. If a second crime is committed, and it can be anticipated, he can be held criminally responsible for that crime, as well.

Problematic law

Nearly thirty years ago, I was appointed to represent a capital murder defendant in Brazos County where the “law of parties” was involved.

In that case, my client agreed with another person to do physical harm to the victim and the victim died as a result.

Even though there was no direct evidence that my client intended the death of the victim, his conduct fit clearly within the “law of parties.”

This is not the case with Kenneth Foster. Foster was merely present in the vicinity of the murder, not a participant in it in any way except that he was driving the car in which the killer, Brown, left the scene.

It should surprise no one who keeps up with such cases that Foster is a black man accused of killing a white man, a factor in many capital murder cases. Michael LaHood was the son of a well-known attorney in San Antonio. The LaHood family, through the media, made it known it wanted the guilty parties executed.

The prosecuting attorney withheld evidence that would have supported Brown’s testimony that LaHood was armed and that Brown shot him in self-defense.

Foster was tried with Brown, a decision by the judge and prosecutor that prejudiced Foster’s chance to receive a fair trial. Foster’s court-appointed attorney made no inquiries into Foster’s background. Had he done so, he would have found many factors that would have mitigated against sentencing him to death by lethal injection.

Proponents of capital punishment argue that we need this punishment for those who are the worst of the worse; for those who commit murder under the most cold and heinous circumstances; for the irretrievably lost among us. None of these conditions comes close to describing Kenneth Foster.

This case is not about revenge against Kenneth Foster because Foster didn’t kill Michael LaHood, nor did he even want to kill him. It is about blood lust.

Whether the proponents of capital punishment take refuge in Scripture or their general outrage at crime, their hands will be covered with the blood of Kenneth Foster if this travesty of justice is not stopped.

Lamar Hankins is a San Marcos attorney.

Upcoming Actions for Kenneth Foster!

2007-08-23T15:56:00.001-07:00

EMERGENCY RESPONSE TO THE BOARD OF PARDON AND PAROLE DECISION: STANDING
CALL FOR A PRESS CONFERENCE AND RALLY.

5PM, Governor's Mansion at 11th and Lavaca, on the day of the ruling.

The BPP is expected to make their clemency recommendation anytime between
now and Tuesday the 28th of August. Check your email and phone as much as
possible between now and Tuesday and be ready to come out at 5PM on the day
we hear a decision. Again, any day between now and Tuesday, August 28th!

SURROUND THE MANSION WITH CLEMENCY LETTERS SATURDAY!

Saturday, August 25 at 3:00 PM
Governor's Mansion, 11th and Lavaca.

Join family and supporters of Kenneth as we make a chain of clemency letters
around the Governor's mansion. Bring your own personal letter to Governor
Perry to read and add to the chain!

FAMILY MEMBER'S FORUM IN HOUSTON ON SATURDAY!

You are invited to meet Kenneth's father, grandfather, and wife on Saturday,
August 25, from 2-4 PM at St. Saviour Baptist Church at 5202 Tronewood in
Northeast Houston. Here how someone who shot no one, who killed no one, can
be executed in Texas. Here about a young man who became educated and
politicized on death row and became a leader and an organizer. And find out
how you can help stop his execution.

RALLY IN LIVINGSTON AUGUST 29TH OUTSIDE THE POLUNSKY UNIT!
RALLY IN HUNTSVILLE AUGUST 30 OUTSIDE THE DEATH HOUSE!
Details on these two protests to be announced soon. Everyone should plan to
be at these protests if possible. Caravan details also to be announced very
soon!

KEEP CALLING GOVERNOR PERRY:
Tell him: ³Don't let Texas execute Kenneth Foster for driving a car!²

In Austin or from out of state: (512) 463-1782
Calling from Texas: (800) 252-9600
Fax: (512) 463-1849
Email: send message from the website:
http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact
<http://www.governor.state.txus/contact>

Austin Rally Makes MSNBC.com!!!!

2007-08-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

MSNBC.com

Protesters Take Stand For Kenneth Foster Jr.'s Clemency

KXAN-TV

An execution scheduled for the end of the month sparked protest in Downtown Austin Tuesday.

Demonstrators called on Gov. Rick Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency to Kenneth Foster Jr.

A jury convicted Foster for attempted robbery and murder. They said he drove the getaway car after Maurecio Brown shot and killed 25-year-old Michael LaHood in San Antonio in 1996.

His case hinges on the law of parties, which allows juries to convict someone by association in a crime even if they didn't commit it.

"Why does my son get the death penalty?" said Kenneth Foster Sr. "He played no part in it, nor had knowledge of what the guy was gonna do."

"We're told that it's reserved for the worst of the worst, that it's designed to protect the people of Texas, to do it in their names, and here we have a man who drove a car, who was admittedly in the wrong place at the wrong time, but everyone on every side of this case agrees he killed no one," said Bryan McCann of the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign.

Kenneth Foster Jr.'s execution is set for Aug. 30.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20383806/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Dallas/Ft. Worth Star Telegram Editorial Staff Comes Out in Favor of Kenneth!

2007-08-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Posted on Sun, Aug. 19, 2007

In the law's eyes

Star-Telegram

Kenneth Foster Jr. is no model citizen. But he doesn't deserve to die.

If the state's "law of parties" statute does not permit the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry to realize that, the law is subject to Charles Dickens' characterization in Oliver Twist:

"'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, ... 'the law is a ass -- a idiot.'"

The circumstances that sparked Bumble's retort are similar to -- although much less serious than -- the 1996 tragedy that put Foster on Death Row. Bumble had been accused of stealing jewelry that belonged to Oliver's mother. After making sure his wife was out of earshot, Bumble told his attorney, "It was all Mrs. Bumble."

Brownlow, the lawyer, advised Bumble that this is no excuse: "'You were present on the occasion ... and, indeed, you are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.'"

Foster certainly is not more guilty than Mauriceo Brown, who fatally shot Michael LaHood in the early hours of Aug. 15, 1996, in San Antonio. Nor is he more guilty than DeWayne Dillard and Julius Steen, who were in the car smoking marijuana with Brown while Foster drove.

Foster did not get out of the car when Steen and Brown robbed a Hispanic woman at gunpoint and later robbed a man and two women in a parking lot. And Foster did not leave the car when Brown jumped out and shot LaHood after a brief verbal exchange.

Brown was executed July 19, 2006. Neither Steen nor Dillard were prosecuted for this case, although both are serving long prison sentences. Foster's trial lawyers never even interviewed them. Both were facing charges in other capital cases, and their attorneys nixed making them available to Foster's defense team, according to Amnesty International.

Texas law states that "if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it." Defendants can be held responsible for "failing to anticipate" that the conspiracy -- in Foster's case, the robberies -- would lead to another felony.

The "law of parties" is clearly about conspiracy and organized crime. Foster's case shows little organization, much less a conspiracy.

Four states other than Texas have "law of parties" statutes. But Texas is the only state that applies it in capital cases, making it the only place in the country where people can face the death penalty even though they didn't actually kill the victim.

The long-term solution is for the Texas Legislature to revisit the state's "law of parties" statutes.

That doesn't help Foster, who is scheduled for execution by lethal injection Aug. 30.

Five out of seven members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles must recommend clemency before Perry will consider it. We urge them to make that recommendation to the governor.

Foster might deserve to spend the rest of his natural life sitting behind bars. But to do that, he has to be alive.

August 21 Rally in Austin a Major Success!

2007-08-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Excellent video coverage of this important event has been posted online by KVUE and KXAN.

August 21, 2007

Governor Perry Unwilling to Face Family of Death Row Inmate Kenneth Foster

About 200 members of Kenneth Foster’s family, friends, and supporters rallied today in Austin to demand that Governor Rick Perry hear the Foster family’s pleas for clemency. At the south Capitol gate at 5 p.m., Bryan McCann, a leader in the Austin-based Save Kenneth Foster Campaign, reminded the gathered crowd, “Every judge in Texas, every prosecutor, every politician, and even Governor Perry all agree on one thing: Kenneth Foster killed no one.”

Then McCann read from a letter from Kenneth Foster. In the letter, Foster vowed that he and Joe Amador (whose execution is scheduled for August 29) would engage in “passive non-participation” in the preparations for his execution, including a hunger strike to begin August 22.

Foster wrote, “Texas will surpass 400 murders this year. If we are to be unjustly taken then we do not want to go silently. We will not walk to our executions and we will not eat last meals. We will not give this process a humane face.”

It was in this spirit that Foster’s supporters marched from the Capitol to the Governor’s Mansion, where Nydesha Foster (Kenneth’s daughter), Tasha Foster (Kenneth’s wife), and Lawrence Foster (Kenneth’s grandfather) presented the assembly with three personal letters they had written to the Governor.

In her remarks, Nydesha Foster said she was asking the Governor to spare her father “because I love him very much.” She also called attention to the injustice of the Law of Parties and called on the Governor to give the family justice.

In a dramatic turn, six activists sat down to block the gates of the Governor’s mansion in a physical demonstration of solidarity with Foster’s non-cooperation with the criminal justice system. In June 2000, a dozen activists were arrested during a similar protest of the execution of Gary Graham (a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa).

On Tuesday, however, the police held back as protesters chanted, “Governor Perry, take these letters!” Repeated ringing of the doorbell on the gates went unheeded. Demonstrators chanted, “Save Kenneth Foster!” and “It’s Not Justice, It’s a Lie! Kenneth Foster Must Not Die!”

In the face of the State’s unwillingness to engage the Foster family and other supporters, the crowd spread out across the street, blocking traffic for forty-five minutes. Tasha Foster, Nydesha Foster, and other activists took turns on the bullhorn, calling on Perry and his representatives to respond.

They did not. Then the activists sitting across the Governor’s mansion’s driveway addressed the crowd. “It is clear that the Governor has no interest in being accountable to the people and that he does not care that an innocent man awaits his execution,” said Katie Feyh, who had been among those sitting in.

McCann, who also had been obstructing the driveway, stood and called on those present to continue to make themselves heard all the way up to the time of Foster’s scheduled execution. Noting the growing public pressure and extensive media coverage of the case, McCann said, “We’ve given Perry every reason to do the right thing. We will not be silent until he does.”

Kenneth Foster, Jr. has been on Texas’ death row since 1997 for the shooting death of Michael LaHood, Jr. Foster did not shoot the gun that ended LaHood’s life, but was driving the car carrying the actual triggerman, Mauriceo Brown. Foster was convicted and sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, which allows the state to seek convictions for those present at the scene of a crime as if they committed it. Since Foster’s original trial, the other men in the car that night have testified that Foster had no idea LaHood would be shot. Since Foster received his August 30 execution date, a coalition of family, friends, and other supporters have organized to save his life. The August 21 event follows news that the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Foster relief. At present, the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign, along with Foster’s legal team and thousands of people around the world, are petitioning the Governor and Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency. The case has received considerable local, regional, and national media attention and public support for Foster has been pronounced.

The Save Kenneth Foster Campaign was established on May 30, 2007 to organize a campaign to halt the execution of Kenneth Foster, Jr. It meets weekly in Austin, Texas, next on August 22 at 7 p.m. at the Carver Library.

Online: http://www.savekenneth.blogspot.com. More information on the Kenneth Foster case is available at http://www.freekenneth.com.

Kenneth in the London Guardian

2007-08-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Texas defies federal court with plan to execute man who did not kill

· Controversial state law led to murder conviction
· Accomplice had sat in car 25 metres from shooting

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 20, 2007
The Guardian

Texas is poised to execute a man for a crime he did not commit. While the perpetrator of the murder in San Antonio was executed last year, Kenneth Foster, who was sitting in a car 25 metres away at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to death under the "law of parties".

The controversial Texas law removes the distinction between the principal actor and accomplice in a crime, and makes a person guilty if they "should have anticipated" the crime.

While a federal appeals court declared that Foster's death sentence contained a "fundamental constitutional defect", a legal anomaly means the state appeals court cannot overturn his conviction, there being no new evidence.

After the failure this month of Foster's most recent appeal, the 30-year-old African-American's final hope of avoiding execution on August 30 rests with an appeal for clemency to the Texas parole board and the Texan governor, Rick Perry.

"He's on death row because they screwed up," said his attorney, Keith Hampson. "There has been a series of mistakes that has had a cascading effect. Now I'm asking the court to step in on their own motion to correct their mistake. Otherwise this guy gets executed."

On August 14 1996 Foster and three friends were driving around San Antonio smoking marijuana and robbing people at gunpoint. Foster, who was driving, stayed in the car while two others, Mauriceo Brown and Julius Steen, robbed. As they went to the home of Dwayne Dillard, the fourth person in the car, they found themselves in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. A woman asked why they were following her, and as she left Brown got out of the car and followed her to the home of her boyfriend, Michael LaHood. Brown and Mr LaHood argued, and the three in the car, 25 metres away, heard a "pop". Brown returned to the car and Foster drove off.

The four were arrested in connection with Mr LaHood's murder. Dillard was never tried for the crime, and Steen had a deal with the prosecutors. The prosecutors sought the death sentence only for Brown and Foster, and at the district attorney's behest the pair were tried together.

While Brown's conviction was straightforward, Foster's depended on Steen's testimony - who had said he had had "a pretty good idea" of what was going to happen when Brown left the car. In the trial Steen's testimony was key: it showed there had been a conspiracy to commit the armed robbery. If Steen knew about it, the logic went, then so did Foster.

The decision to try Brown and Foster together harmed Foster, said his attorney. Foster, the bigger man, appeared the dominant figure. And when Steen testified, his gang friends arrived to watch. The jury allegedly assumed the gang was linked to Foster; they requested and got armed guards for the remainder of the trial.

Brown and Foster received death sentences in May 1997. Brown was executed by lethal injection last year.

Since Foster's conviction evidence has emerged suggesting there was no agreement to rob Mr LaHood. But the basis for Foster's appeal has been the unconstitutionality of his punishment, a point made by his lawyer in a letter this month to the head of the Texas parole and pardons board. However, the fifth circuit court of appeals concurred with previous rulings that Foster should have known someone might be killed that night in 1996.

"Foster could not have helped but anticipate the possibility that a human life would be taken [during] one or more of his co-conspirators' armed robberies," the court wrote. It said he clearly displayed "reckless disregard for human life".

Foster's lawyer is dismayed. "We're caught by this procedural glitch. Every court that has looked at this [concludes] his execution would be unconstitutional. It's maddening," Mr Hampson said.

The matter now rests with the Texas parole board, which can recommend the governor commutes the sentence if at least five of the seven board members agree. But Mr Perry has never commuted a death sentence, even on such advice.

In Texas 398 people have been put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in 1974, more than in any other state.

Kenneth's Case in the Dallas Morning News

2007-08-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

Getaway driver nears execution for '96 murder
90 feet away when crime happened, Texas robber still fighting execution
08:17 AM CDT on Monday, August 20, 2007
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Kenneth Foster's supporters say he was up for getting high and robbing a few people on that San Antonio night in 1996 but never anticipated the spree would lead to murder.

Courtesy photo

Kenneth Foster is scheduled to be executed Aug. 30 for a 1996 murder in which he was driving the getaway car but was not the triggerman. He has maintained that he had no knowledge the killing was going to happen.

He was in a car nearly 90 feet away when one of his partners shot and killed Michael LaHood in what jurors determined was a botched robbery. Barring a last-minute commutation by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry, he'll be executed for the crime Aug. 30.

Mr. Foster is one of an estimated 80 Texas death row inmates convicted under the state's "law of parties" – which authorizes capital punishment for accomplices who either intended to kill or "should have anticipated" a murder, regardless of whether they pulled the trigger.

Most states have such laws for many types of crimes, but Texas is the only state to apply it broadly to capital cases. Death penalty opponents decry its use, saying it broadens capital punishment far too much.

Prosecutors argue that all those responsible must be held accountable for such heinous acts.

"But for Mr. Foster driving that car, but for his planning, his decision to engage in this crime, Mr. LaHood would be alive," said Cliff Herberg, a Bexar County first assistant district attorney whose office prosecuted the case. Letting Mr. Foster off the hook "would be like saying the 9/11 hijackers on the plane weren't guilty of anything because they're not the ones who flew it."

Opponents of the death penalty hope the Foster case brings a focus to the issue. They're holding rallies, sending mass e-mails and operating blogs aimed at tearing down the Texas law of parties.

Short of time

Keith Hampton, Mr. Foster's attorney, estimates that 20 death row inmates convicted under the law of parties have been put to death in Texas in the last two decades.

"As far as putting people on death row, there isn't anywhere in the country that even approaches the reach of Texas' provision," Mr. Hampton said.

But it's also about trying to save his client, and he says he's running short of time and legal options. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, upheld Mr. Foster's sentence for a final time this month.

Mr. Foster "is trying to stay focused," his lawyer said. "But he has pretty bad days."

The summer night was trouble from the start: Mr. Foster, at the wheel of his grandfather's rental car, cruised around town with three of his buddies, swilling 40-ounce beers and smoking marijuana.

By midnight, they agreed to make some cash by holding a few people up. Wearing bandannas and brandishing a .44-caliber pistol, they picked out targets and committed two robberies, netting a couple hundred dollars.

Toward the end of their evening, the men ended up in a neighborhood they didn't recognize, trailing a Mustang and a Toyota onto a dead end street. When those cars pulled into a driveway, Mr. Foster started to pull away. But he stopped when a woman got out of the Toyota and flagged them down, demanding to know why they were following her.

The men in the car engaged the woman in a teasing, flirtatious conversation. When she headed up the driveway, Mauriceo Brown, one of Mr. Foster's robbing partners, hopped out of the car after her, running into her boyfriend, Mr. LaHood, up by the carport. After a couple of minutes, Mr. Brown pulled out his gun and fired one shot, killing Mr. LaHood.

According to the woman's trial testimony, Mr. Brown held them up, demanding their keys and wallets. But the men in the car, including Mr. Foster, have testified that they thought they were done robbing for the night and that there was no plan to stick up – and certainly not to murder – Mr. LaHood.

Mr. Brown, who confessed to the murder after police stopped their car, later testified he went up to the woman to try to get her phone number and fired his pistol after he thought he heard Mr. LaHood cock a gun. (No weapon was found on Mr. LaHood). Mr. Brown, who testified he never would've embarked on a holdup by himself, was executed last summer for the murder. The two other passengers in the car, who were tried separately, received life sentences.

Mr. Foster's attorney believes his client's fate was sealed during his joint trial with Mr. Brown, when one of his robbing partners testified that "it was kind of like, I guess, understood, what was probably fixing to go down" when Mr. Brown got out of the car.

It was enough for jurors – and later, the appeals court – to support a capital murder charge for Mr. Foster on the basis of conspiracy: They believed Mr. Foster, as the getaway driver on two previous robberies, either knew what was about to occur or should have anticipated it.

Mr. Foster's jury "had to find that unanimously, beyond a reasonable doubt," said Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental affairs for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. "The fact that the defendant claims the jury is wrong is not news."

But Mr. Foster's attorney never got the chance to cross-examine the two partners who received life sentences. One has since given a sworn statement to Mr. Hampton saying he didn't understand Mr. Brown's intent was to rob Mr. LaHood until Mr. Brown had already made his way up the driveway. The other has testified that Mr. Foster asked the men all night to quit and worried about returning the car to his grandfather.

Mr. Foster's attorney and his friends and family have used this new testimony to paper the courts with last-minute appeals. And they say they're bombarding Mr. Perry's office with desperate pleas for a commutation for Mr. Foster, who, from his cell in Livingston, has become an advocate for humane treatment for death row inmates since he joined their ranks a decade ago. This month, Texas is scheduled to execute its 400th death row inmate since 1985.

"It's a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Bob Van Steenburg, of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "He should absolutely not be executed."

Brother disagrees

But Nico LaHood, who raced out of the house that night 11 years ago to find his older brother dead in the driveway, said these activists, "while well-intentioned, are ill-informed."

"We support the laws of the state of Texas, we support the jury of 12, we support their verdict, which was a just verdict," he said. Death penalty opponents "are taking a stance on something they don't understand. Was your son, was your brother, shot in the face in your driveway? I would venture to say probably not."

In a last-ditch effort, Mr. Hampton is filing a shot-in-the-dark brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, referring to the high court's 1982 ruling in Enmund vs. Florida that forbade capital punishment for a getaway driver sitting in the car during a botched robbery-turned-murder. The court decided the case under the premise that the driver "did not kill or intend to kill, and thus his culpability is different from that of the robbers who killed."

In a separate case five years later, the justices ruled the death penalty can be imposed on an accomplice if he or she was a "major participant" in a murder and acted with "reckless indifference" to human life.

"There are constitutional limitations on what you can do to somebody who isn't the triggerman," said Steven Shatz, director of the University of San Francisco's Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project. "Merely participating in a robbery is not sufficient, is not in itself a reckless disregard."

Mr. Shatz said there are hardly any people on California's death row who aren't actual killers.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles generally doesn't make a recommendation to the governor's office until a few days before the execution. And Mr. Perry, who isn't known for showing leniency toward death row inmates, won't take a position until after the board rules, spokesman Robert Black said.

Mr. Hampton's not holding out much hope.

"The track record in Texas is extremely, extremely bad," he said.

REMINDER: Rally for Kenneth in Austin, Tuesday!

2007-08-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

August 21, 2007 at 5pm
11th and Congress, Austin, TX

Supporters and family of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who faces an August 30 execution
date, will gather in front of the Capitol and march to the Governor's Mansion
to make our voices heard! Kenneth sits on Texas' death row because he was
present when Mauriceo Brown shot Michael LaHood in 1996. He killed no one.
Even Texas will admit this. Join the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign as we raise
our voices to demand that Governor Perry stay this execution! For more
information, visit http://www.freekenneth.com.

Excellent Editorial by Dave Zirin in the Star-Telegram!

2007-08-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Posted on Sun, Aug. 19, 2007

Are words dangerous?

By DAVE ZIRIN
Special to the Star-Telegram

Who knew sports history could strike fear in the most fearsome prison system in the United States? But what other explanation could there be for the fact that the history of "America's Pastime" is being denied to Texas Death Row prisoner Kenneth Foster Jr.?

Kenneth's case has garnered international attention because both prosecution and defense agree that he was 80 feet away from the murder of Michael LaHood. Earlier in the evening, he had been driving the man who pulled the trigger, Maurecio Brown. In Texas, that's enough to land him on Death Row.

Foster and I began to exchange letters on sports and politics after he read my book Welcome to the Terrordome.

"I have never had the opportunity to view sports in this way," he wrote. "And as I went through these revelations I began to have epiphanies about the way sports have a similar existence in prison. The similarities shook me .... Facing execution, the only thing that I began to get obsessive about was how to get heard and be free, and as the saying goes -- you can't serve 2 gods. Sports, as you know, becomes a way of life. You monitor it, you almost come to breathe it. Sports becomes a way of life in prison, because it becomes a way of survival. For men that don't have family or friends to help them financially ...it becomes a way to occupy your time. That's another sad story in itself, but it's the root to many men's obsession with sports."

It didn't matter whether he was on Death Row or Park Avenue -- I felt smarter having read his words. But even more satisfying was the thought that thinking about sports took his mind -- for a moment -- away from his imminent death, the 11-year-old daughter he will never touch again and the words he will never write.

I thought that sending him my first book, What's My Name Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the U.S., would be a good follow-up -- but here is where the Texas Department of Corrections got its briefs in a bunch.

A form titled "Texas Dept of Criminal Justice, Publication review/denial notification" issued to Kenneth on Aug. 9 says that What's My Name Fool? was banned from the row: "It contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots."

It specifically said that Pages 44 and 55 met this criteria.

After lifting my jaw off the ground, I went to read those dangerous pages.

On Page 44, the radioactive quote in question was from that seditious revolutionary Jackie Robinson -- you know, the guy whose number is retired by all of Major League Baseball. I quoted Robinson's autobiography, I Never Had It Made, when he wrote about suffering racism early in his rookie season:

"I felt tortured and I tried to just play ball and ignore the insults. But it was really getting to me. ... For one wild and rage-crazed moment I thought, 'To hell with Mr. Rickey's "noble experiment." ... To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create.' I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of [expletive] and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all."

On Page 55, the offensive passage was about Jack Johnson's defeat of the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries. It read:

"Johnson was faster, stronger and smarter than Jeffries. He knocked Jeffries out with ease.

"After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the country -- in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of white lynch mobs attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back. This reaction to a boxing match was one of the most widespread racial uprisings in the U.S. until the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

Let's forget about the fact that there is something bizarre -- almost comical -- about Texas prison authorities believing that a sports history could lead to "the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots."

Let's forget that they are denying a man reading material in his last hours.

There is something repugnant about the fact that they think a book -- any book -- would be the source of resistance, rather than the reality that 159 people have been executed since Gov. Rick Perry took office in 2001, or the fact that the people on Death Row have no civil rights, no access to radio, television or even arts and crafts.

It reminds me of the words of Carl Oglesby of the 1960s group Students for a Democratic Society: "It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."

The officials' fear that ideas -- even the ideas of sports history -- could cause a crisis in the Texas prisons reveals only how aware the Lone Star jailers are of how inhumanely they treat their prisoners.

There was a time in Texas when it was illegal to teach slaves to read. The fear was that ideas could turn anger often directed inward into action against those with their boots on black necks. It is perhaps the most fitting possible tribute to Jackie Robinson and Jack Johnson that their stories still strike fear into the hearts of those wearing the boots.

Kenneth is Interviewed by KXAN

2007-08-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Man Speaks About Life From Death Row

Aug 15, 2007 11:17 PM

A death row inmate is making a final plea for his life while the family of the victim says it's time for him to die.

Kenneth Foster's execution is scheduled for Aug. 30.

A jury found him responsible for the 1996 death of 25-year-old Michael LaHood Jr. in San Antonio.

Supporters dropped off a stack of petitions to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Wednesday to get its members to rethink the law of parties in Kenneth Foster's case.

The law convicts someone by association in a crime.

In this case, it's a crime Foster said he didn't commit.

From Conversation Booth 23 and possibly 2 weeks of conversations left, Kenneth Foster said he is fighting with and for every breath.

"I want you to realize that you're going to kill a man who hasn't killed anybody," Foster said.

A jury convicted Maurecio Brown for LaHood shooting death, but the jury convicted Foster for murder by association for driving Brown to and from the shooting that night.

"There's guys walking around out here with cases worse than mine, killers, walking around right out here," Foster said. "They're walking around, and they've got me back here on death sentence for driving a car."

"You never get over the loss of your child," said Norma LaHood, Michael's mother.

In San Antonio, the LaHood family said justice for their son will come when Foster is in the death chamber.

"There isn't any closure when you lose a child, but I pray, and I'm looking forward to putting this phase to rest," Norma said.

"I regret their loss," Foster said. "I'm sorry, but the bottom line is I didn't kill your son."

As Foster maintains his innocence on death row in Livingston, there were at least three judges in Austin on his latest court case that agreed he may have that claim to innocence.

The dissenting judges from the Court of Criminal Appeals said new evidence after trial may have cleared Foster, but the five in the majority outweighed their opinions.

"When we had three saying we acknowledge that your innocence does exist, I mean, it still gave me pieces of hope," Foster said.

Yet hope is not gone for a family that has lost its son.

"I challenge them to get the whole story on whatever individual they're supporting, to find out truly, to get the facts of the case not the person on death row's version," said Nico LaHood, Michael's brother.

A version played out in Foster's possibly final conversations for a crime he said he didn't commit.

"If they want me on the gurney, they're going to have to pack me, and they're going to have to throw me on there," Foster said. "I'm not going to get on there, and I'm not going to walk, because this is wrong. What you're doing is wrong, and I want you to remember this!"

A director with the board of pardons and parole said Wednesday she expects the board to rule on the case on or around Aug. 28, two days before Foster is scheduled to die.

If the board recommends a stay, only then will Perry review the case.

Kenneth's Case on KXAN-Austin

2007-08-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

Campaigners Show Up To Back Death Row Inmate

Aug 14, 2007 09:45 PM

Nearly 50 people came out Tuesday to support the "Save Kenneth Foster" campaign at the Carver Library.

Foster is a death row inmate scheduled to die Aug. 30.

He was convicted as an accomplice in the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood, 25, in San Antonio.

People who support Foster said because he only drove the getaway car, he should not get the death penalty, and they're now appealing to Gov. Rick Perry to grant clemency.

"If you're driving in a car, and someone gets out and shoots somebody, then suddenly you're facing a death sentence, and I think that is something people throughout Texas should be aware of," said campaigner Bryan McCann.

Watch KXAN Austin News at 10 p.m. Wednesday for an interview from death row with Foster and hear how the family of the victim in this case supports the death penalty.

Kenneth on ABC News Online!

2007-08-14T07:08:00.001-07:00

Man to be Executed, Though Prosecutors Know he Didn't Kill

As Kenneth Foster Waits for Death, he Hopes for Reprieve

By WILLIAM MARRA

Aug 14, 2007

Kenneth Foster Jr. is scheduled to be executed in Texas later this month for the murder of Michael LaHood, even though everybody even the prosecutors knows Foster did not kill the man.

Mauriceo Brown, who has admitted to shooting LaHood to death in August 1997, was executed last year, but barring an unlikely 11th-hour commutation from Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, Foster will meet the same fate on Aug. 30.

On the night of Aug. 14, 1997, Foster, Brown, DeWayne Dillard, and Julius Steen were drinking and smoking marijuana when they decided to use Dillard's gun to commit two armed robberies, according to Foster's attorney, Keith Hampton.

As they drove home, their car was apparently flagged down by LaHood's girlfriend, Mary Patrick. According to testimony from Dillard and Steen, Brown exited the vehicle, but there was no discussion that he would rob or kill LaHood, and he was effectively "acting out of an independent impulse."

After Brown shot LaHood, Foster, who was 19 at the time, became very anxious and started to leave the scene, but Dillard and Steen made him wait for Brown to get back in the car. They drove off, but were arrested shortly thereafter, Hampton said.

Foster, who was tried alongside Brown, rather than given a separate trial, is charged under a Texas "law of parties" statute that disintegrates the distinction between the perpetrator of a crime and an accomplice, allowing Foster to be put to death, even though he did not actually pull the trigger.

Dillard and Steen both cooperated with the government and were given plea deals, Hampton said. Brown had testified that he acted in self-defense, but the jury didn't buy that argument, and both he and Foster were sentenced to death.

The application of the law in this case represents what law professors call "extraordinarily severe punitive consequences," with legal precedent normally dictating more lenient consequences.

The legal dispute in the case centers on what Foster knew was going to happen when Brown exited the vehicle, according to legal experts. Under the precedent set in Tyson v. Arizona, U.S. law states that a person may be executed for a crime they did not commit if they were a "major participant" or acted with "reckless indifference to the value of human life."

Given that standard, sentencing Foster to the death penalty is technically legally sound, but, nonetheless, an extremely strict reading of the law, legal experts asid.

"These are extraordinarily severe consequences about what was at best, a guess about what was in [Foster's] mind when these things happened," Robert C. Owen, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin law school said.

"This is a type of case that rarely, if ever, ends up with a death sentence imposed," said John H. Blume, a law professor, and director of Cornell University's Death Penalty Project. "I am willing to bet you there are hundreds of people in prison doing life or substantially less time, who, what they did is as bad if not worse than what Foster did."

Hampton said he has exhausted virtually all legal recourse, including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that his last best hope relies on a recommendation of commutation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to Perry.

Is he hopeful? "No, I am not," Hampton said. "The odds are extremely low."

In fact, the Board of Paroles has only recommended that a sentence be commuted twice in its history. In 1998, a recommendation was approved by then-Gov. George W. Bush in the high-profile case of Henry Lee Lucas. And, in 2004, they recommended the execution of paranoid schizophrenic Kelsey Patterson be commuted to life in prison, but Perry refused to grant the commutation.

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Perry, said the governor considers each execution on a case-by-case basis. She said Texans overwhelmingly support the death penalty, and that Perry, in his suppot for it, is "carrying out the will of the people."

Jackei Deynolles, the acting chair of the 7-person pardons and parole committee that will review Foster's case, would not comment, other than to say that the board has received his petition and will issue a decision on Aug. 28.

Five of the 7 board members must recommend the commutation for it to be put to the governor, Hampton said.

Since assuming office in December 2000, Perry has presided over 159 executions thus far, the most of any governor in history, according to Rick Halperin, the president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. That breaks the record of 152 set by Bush in his approximately six years in office.

More executions occur in Texas than in any other state. Last year, 24 of America's 54 executions were carried out there, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. So far this year, 19 executions have taken place in Texas, and another 11 are scheduled, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Foster's case took a long, legal course to its position today. After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a state district judge's verdict of the death penalty, a federal district court reversed the ruling, saying Foster was ineligible for death row.

The case then went to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which found the Texas court had ruled based on "flawed legal theory," but, nonetheless, reinstated the death sentence on grounds that there was evidence Foster acted with "reckless indifference to human life," especially given the two armed robberies he participated in on the night of the murder.

The Bexar County district attorney's office is prosecuting the case, but the district attorney, first assistant district attorney, and the prosecuting attorney were all unavailable for comment Monday.

An Unlikely Romance

A small grassroots movement is trying to free Foster. One of the leaders of the movement is Tasha Foster, who married Foster only three months ago. They fell in love while exchanging letters three years ago.

They have never actually touched each other, and since they could not be together for their marriage, it took place over a local radio station, so that Foster could listen in to the ceremony from behind bars.

Tasha, a rapper who lives in the Netherlands, and goes by the stage name Jav'lin, said the daunting prospect of marrying a man about to be executed did not scare her away.

"Of course I was wary about it I mean, he is on death row," she said. "But what I found in him was something ... rare, the honesty, the ambition, the being able to smile in a place such as death row, to stay positive and not let the surroundings kill your spirit," she said."

Foster also has an 11-year-old daughter who lives with her mother, Nicole Johnson.

Campaign to End the Death Penalty Hosting a Public Forum for Kenneth

2007-08-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

FIGHTING TO SAVE KENNETH FOSTER JR.
Family Members Speatk Out !

Tuesday, August 14 at 6:30 PM
Carver Library
At Rosewood Ave. and Angelina St.

A Roundtable Featuring:

Nydesha Foster - Daughter of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Tasha Narez-Foster - Wife of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Kenneth Foster Sr. - Father of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Beverly Fisher - First Cousin of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Sandra Reed - Mother of Death Row Prisoner Rodney Reed
Jeannine Scott - Wife of Texas Prisoner Michael Scott
Delia Perez Meyer - Sister of Death Row Prisoner Louis Castro Perez

Kenneth faces an August 30th execution date. Family members discuss
the case and how to stop this and all executions !

Sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty
For more info contact cedpaustin@gmail.com or call 494-0667

Kenneth's Letter to Governor Perry Published in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

2007-08-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Posted on Sun, Aug. 12, 2007

'Often the Divine is revealed through the hardest trials'

By Bob Ray Sanders
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

As Kenneth Foster Jr.'s execution date draws near, I am reminded of the title of Sister Helen Prejean's book Dead Man Walking -- the term that describes a condemned man on his way to the death chamber.

People are working to keep Foster from having to make that journey on Aug. 30 because he did not plan, participate in or anticipate the murder for which he was convicted and sentenced to death.

Last week, a district court in San Antonio denied his subsequent writ for habeas corpus, so now Foster's life is in the hands of Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole.

Mauriceo Brown killed Michael LaHood in San Antonio in 1996 and was executed last year. But under the Texas "law of parties" -- which some legal scholars contend was not intended for this kind of case -- Foster was tried with Brown and given the same verdict and punishment.

At the request of some members of the board of pardons and parole, Foster wrote a letter to Perry. Here is that letter -- at this point, a dead man talking.

Unaware of what I could possibly say that could make a difference, I decided to grasp this opportunity to write to you from my heart, because I believe that God declares for us to live each day to the fullest. While I know that you will be bombarded with letters from people, spoken to by legal representatives and addressed by the media, this is written on a personal basis.

I know that you will have detailed information about my case and the Law of Parties. However, please never forget that although I did not protest when Mauriceo Brown wanted to commit robberies, later I recognized that this was wrong to go along with, and out of respect for my grandfather, I said I had to stop. After I said I wanted to go home, Mauriceo Brown got out of the car to talk to Mary Patrick, and got into an argument with Michael LaHood, which ended with Mauriceo Brown shooting him, of which I had no foreknowledge and would never have permitted, had I known it were going to happen.

I would like to talk from another perspective. What can I say about this death row journey? It has been a curse and a blessing, because as ironic as it may be most humans fear the only thing they are promised at birth and that is death. And as the irony continues, one (here) learns to live by facing death. It's a stunning process. Yet, for each man he experiences something different. ... I could write a book on it and speak volumes to it. But, I will only say that I thank God for allowing me to journey through this keeping my sanity and being anointed with a gift to learn, grow, and pass on positivity.

There's so much that the world doesn't see -- so much that politics will bar, but regardless of it all, a man still has the opportunity to tap into the beauty of humanity and experience that regardless of his outside circumstances. I just wish that you all could see it. I do realize that you feel you have a certain Justice to serve. I've come so far in my journey that I no longer hold spite, because I've been granted an Understanding that is keeping me. ...

I think it's important to tell you that I have tried to use this situation as a transformation process. Everyday I have tried to be an exception to the stigmas and stereotypes. I wanted to show that a man here could be more than his error or labels. And so, as I submitted myself, I found the heart to pray for you and your family, the victim and his family, my co-defendants and their family. I've discovered (and hopefully others will, too,) that the pain, sorrow and compensation is not taken care of through simply saying I'm sorry or through hundreds of executions, rather giving love everyday, helping someone, speaking truth to power -- showing that one man with courage can be a majority. The only Joy I have is in educating, reforming and revitalizing; and if you believe it or not I do this because of you all, not myself. Because if I did anything for me I'd be a wretch, but through you all (those that love me or not,) I've found humanity embracing me. I'm thankful, regardless.

You're a history maker, Governor Perry, and I am a part of your history and I think what happens to me will be a relevant part of history. I wish I could appeal not only to your morale and conscience, but to your soul. I wish we could talk about the last 10 years and everything between. I wish we could view the way each life through this process has been touched. Often the Divine is revealed through the hardest trials and tribulations.

My only plea is that I wish I could live for the sake of my little daughter who will be so deeply wounded to not have her daddy. I do not want to be set free. I want to pay for what I did. I drove a car and let a man rob other people. That is not a capital crime. I allowed Mauriceo Brown to get back in the car. Because of my own blatant shock and disbelief at what had just occurred, I helped him leave a crime scene. That is not a capital crime. I never sought nor desired that Michael LaHood Jr. be killed.

I wrote this letter from the heart, just trying to show you how one can transform, how beauty does persist, how change can come. I prayed different Psalms and Proverbs over this letter. I've passionately spoken all of my request for Forgiveness, Peace, Life, Justice, Freedom, Love, Understanding to The Creator and His Creation. I stand on the Faith knowing that all of the roles we have played in this walk of life will have a greater purpose.

I'm glad to have had this opportunity to speak with you.

Kenneth's Case on CommonDreams.org!

2007-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Published on Saturday, August 11, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Kenneth Foster and the Texas Death House

by Liliana Segura

Kenneth Foster’s time is running out.

On Tuesday, August 7, in a six-to-three decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his final writ of habeas corpus, giving the legal green light for his execution. Foster, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on August 30, is now at the mercy of the merciless Board of Pardons and Paroles. The odds are bad. Five out of seven board members must recommend clemency before Governor Rick Perry will consider it–and in a state that has executed nearly 400 people in thirty years, clemency has only been granted twice. But Foster’s supporters, who are spearheading a letter-writing campaign to the board and governor, are relying on one particularly salient detail to move their minds, if not their hearts: Foster didn’t kill anyone.

Kenneth Foster was convicted for the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood Jr., who was shot following a string of robberies, by a man named Mauriceo Brown. Brown admitted to the shooting and was executed by lethal injection last year. So, if Brown was the shooter, what did the 19-year-old Foster do to get a death sentence? He sat in his car, 80 feet away, unaware that a murder was taking place.

Foster was convicted under Texas’s “law of parties,” a twist on a felony murder statute that enables a jury to convict a defendant who was not the primary actor in a crime. This can mean sentencing someone to death even if he or she had no proven role in a murder. Texas’s law states that “if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it.” Defendants, the Texas courts say, can be held responsible for “failing to anticipate” that the “conspiracy”-in Foster’s case, the robberies, for which he was the getaway driver-would lead to a murder. Foster’s sentence, death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal recently commented, “criminalizes presence, not actions.”

In theory, the law of parties is “a well-recognized legal document,” says Houston defense attorney Clifford Gunter, and most states with the death penalty on the books include a similar provision for “non-triggermen.” Nevertheless, critics of the Texas law say it’s an aberration-a slippery legal statute that stands in direct violation of the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Enmund v. Florida. Still the “prevailing view,” according to Gunter, Enmund held that the death penalty was unconstitutional for a defendant “who aids and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place or that lethal force will be employed.” In Texas today, the law or parties says exactly the opposite.

Even more troubling is the law in practice. When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.

One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green’s appellate lawyer, Verna Langham-who also handled Kenneth Foster’s first appeal-sees as the danger of the law of parties. “[It] is subject to such loose interpretation,” she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. “A kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death.” Green was executed in 1999.

No formal study has been done on the number of defendants subjected to the law of parties in Texas. Anti-death penalty activists estimate that Texas death row has 80 to 100. This number seems high to David Dow, founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and author of Executed on a Technicality (2005). But he says that it could be an accurate measure of the number of prisoners whose juries were given the choice of applying the law of parties, even if their conviction did not hinge on it. “In a lot of cases, you have a [law of parties] instruction, but jurors have to find one or the other: Either the person was responsible for killing the victim or they are responsible for participating in a crime where it should have been anticipated that a murder would take place.” For a defendant facing lethal injection, it’s a distinction without a difference. Regardless of the number of times the law of parties has been used, its clear effect has been to broaden the pool of defendants eligible for death. By inviting a jury to speculate whether a defendant “should have known” a murder could happen, it drastically lowers the burden of proof for a punishment supposedly reserved for “the worst of the worst.”

From the zeal of prosecutors to the legal machinery that supports them, “the structure of the Texas’s legal system makes it easier to sentence people to death,” says Dow. Between the Polunsky Unit in Livingston and the women’s death row in Gatesville, nearly 400 prisoners are awaiting execution. By the end of the summer, Texas will have killed its 400th prisoner since the death penalty was brought back. The state that famously carried out 152 executions under Governor George W. Bush has seen Gov. Rick Perry surpass his record. Since taking office in December 2000, Perry has signed off on over 158 executions-a number that will be dated when this piece goes to press (and which would be higher still were it not for the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which forced Perry to commute the death sentences of 28 prisoners who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime). In this context, it’s hard not to see the law of parties as an irresistible tool in a legal system designed to summarily execute people. Especially if the defendant is black and the victim is white.

Kenneth Foster’s case is a good example. He’s not just a black man accused of killing a white man; he was convicted for killing the son of an attorney highly esteemed by the legal community. As with so many other cases involving families of influence, the media was all over it, and the LaHood family’s wish for an execution quickly became public knowledge. (LaHood’s mother reaffirmed her support of Mauriceo Brown’s execution last year.) In other particularly high-profile cases, the law of parties has come in similarly handy for the prosecution. In the trial of Patrick Murphy Jr.-one of the notorious “Texas Seven,” who in 2000 escaped from prison, killed a police officer on Christmas Eve, and were summarily sentenced to die-prosecutors seeking death sentences across the board used the law of parties to circumvent the fact that Murphy was not at the scene of the crime. Prospective jurors were asked not just how they felt about capital punishment, but also about the law of parties specifically. (It worked. Murphy is now sitting on death row.)

The many excesses of Texas capital law offer a portrait of a brutal and broken system-one that has long been protested by anti-death penalty activists. More recently, prisoners themselves have begun to organize from the inside. Kenneth Foster is among them. In 2005 he helped found D.R.I.V.E, a group of death row prisoners who protest the death penalty as well the abusive conditions of their incarceration. D.R.I.V.E, which stands for “Death Row Inner-Communalist Vanguard Engagement,” is multi-racial, highly political, and, perhaps most important, thriving-on one of the most repressive death rows in the country. Members encourage fellow prisoners to protest on execution days, and to protest their own executions (refusing to walk to the van that takes them to the executions chamber; refusing last meals). They also protest inhumane prison conditions. Last fall, a dozen death row prisoners at Polunsky went on a hunger strike to protest the inedible food and constantly overflowing toilets in their cells, among other abuses. Comparing themselves to the hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, they eventually caught the attention of the New York Times.

Some members of the group also invoke the legacy of Gary Graham-a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa-the Texas death row prisoner who was executed in 2000, despite overwhelming evidence that he could be innocent. Graham, who was put to death amidst widespread protests, maintained his innocence until the end, declaring in his last statement, “They are murdering me tonight.” This era, which Dow considers the “heyday” of protest around executions, coincided with increased repression on Texas death row. Following an attempted prison break in the late 90s, the death row population was relocated. At their new home in the Polunsky Unit, prisoners are housed for 23 hours a day in cells that are 60 square feet (the American Correctional Association recommends a minimum of 80 feet). Work and recreation privileges are pretty much non-existent, and the few prisoners entitled to small luxuries can easily have them taken away. Such is the case of Stephen Moody, whose participation in last fall’s hunger strike led to the confiscation of his radio. Texas death row prisoners are allowed no contact visits, and only a few phone calls a year.

Despite this, Kenneth Foster and D.R.I.V.E. have allies on the outside. In addition to his supporters and family in Texas, a New York-based political hip-hop group called the Welfare Poets is speaking out on behalf of Foster and other prisoners on Texas death row; grassroots groups like the Campaign to End the Death Penalty are working to protest Foster’s execution, from Harlem to Austin. With Foster’s legal recourses dried up and his execution date fast approaching, a letter campaign to members of the appeal board is intensifying. But it’s a long shot. “Perry has never granted clemency in a capital case before, even when the Board recommended it,” says Bryan McCann, a CEDP activist in Austin. “If Kenneth Foster has a good innocence claim, that would be great for him,” Dow says, noting that innocence is what gets attention these days. But while Foster’s supporters argue that Foster is innocent-that nobody should be executed “for driving a car,” in the slaughterhouse state of Texas, innocence can be harder to prove than guilt.

Liliana Segura is a writer and anti-death penalty activist in New York.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/11/3114/

Kenneth Featured in The Nation!

2007-08-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Foster's Fate

Peter RothbergFri Aug 10, 1:08 PM ET

The Nation -- In less than three weeks Kenneth Foster, an African American man sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Michael LaHood, is scheduled to be executed in Texas.

LaHood's actual killer, Mauriceo Brown, was executed in 2006. Foster, who was in a car about 100 yards from the crime when it was committed, was convicted under the controversial Texas state "law of parties", under which the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime is abolished. The law can impose the death penalty on anybody involved in a crime where a murder occurred. In Foster's case he was driving a car with three passengers, one of whom, Brown, left the car, got into an altercation and shot LaHood dead. Texas is the only state that applies this statute in capital cases, making it the only place in the United States where a person can be factually innocent of murder and still face the death penalty.

Foster maintains that he did not know that Brown would either rob or kill LaHood. According to an Amnesty International investigation, there is evidence not heard at trial that the murder was an unplanned act committed by Brown, as the latter himself claimed before his execution.

In 2005, a federal district judge found a "fundamental constitutional defect in Foster's sentence" and ruled that Foster's jury had not been asked to determine if he had any intent to kill LaHood, and that this failure represented a misapplication of the law. However, the state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.

The crazy thing about this case is that no one argues that Foster killed the victim. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's award-winning columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote, the case "is further proof of how cruel, capricious, unjust and utterly insane our death penalty laws have become....Because of this tainted system, whether you believe in capital punishment or not, a man who did not plan or commit a murder will die August 30 unless somebody -- a judge, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and/or the governor-- has the heart and the guts to stop it."

You can help these folks get up the guts at freekenneth.com. Find updates on the case and urge members of the Texas legislature to stay Foster's execution and ask for a re-trial based on new evidence.

Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.

Galveston County's Daily News in Support of Kenneth!!

2007-08-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

Don’t conspire to let Foster die

By Heber Taylor
The Daily News

Published August 10, 2007

In a democracy, people have a collective responsibility to make sure the laws they create work and don’t result in miscarriages of justice.

That is why you should care about Kenneth Foster Jr., who is scheduled to be executed Aug. 30.

Foster was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to die, although he did not kill anyone or conspire to kill anyone.

Foster is guilty of making some awful decisions. He also is guilty of armed robbery. He deserves to be in prison.

But he does not deserve to die.

Foster is on death row because of a poor reading of the Law of Parties. The law was intended to hold people responsible for conspiracies. It’s a good concept, but a flawed law.

If you are a getaway driver and help plan a robbery, you’re responsible for anything that happens as a result of the robbery. If the people who point guns at the clerk and demand the money start shooting, the getaway driver is on the hook for that. That’s as it should be.

But, as a federal judge pointed out, Foster did not kill or conspire to kill Michael LaHood in San Antonio in 1996.

Instead, when he was 19, Foster drove three friends around in a car that had been rented by his grandfather. One of those friends, Mauriceo Brown, turned out to be a murderer.

With Foster driving, the young men rode around, smoked marijuana and committed two armed robberies.

Had one of the robbery victims been shot, you could make a better case for applying the Law of Parties. But, according to testimony from two of the men involved, Dewayne Dillard and Julius Steen, Foster repeatedly pleaded that he needed to return the car home.

It’s hard to see him conspiring to kill Michael LaHood. In fact, he had no idea who LaHood was when Brown got out of the car and shot him.

Brown was executed last year.

Steen got 35 years to life. Dillard got life. What’s the rationale to sentence Foster to death when the other two in the car got prison terms?

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment does not allow the death penalty for “a minor participant in a felony and does not kill, attempt to kill or intend to kill.”

U.S. District Judge Royal Furgeson of San Antonio tossed out the death sentence. But the appellate court in New Orleans overturned his ruling.

If people in Texas let Foster die, we’ll be putting our approval on the idea that it’s OK to use a law designed to punish conspirators even in cases where there’s no conspiracy. And we’ll be saying we’ll stretch the law in cases where we’re mad enough against one criminal but we won’t stretch the law in cases where we’re not that mad at his two riding buddies.

We hope an awful lot of Texans have the integrity not to sign off on that farce.

Gov. Rick Perry could and should put a stop to this with the recommendation of a commuted sentence from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

We urge you to write the board and the governor. Tell them Foster should pay for his crimes in prison. But he shouldn’t be executed.

+++ Addresses to write: Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Executive Clemency Section 8610 Shoal Creek Blvd. Austin, Texas 78757

Gov. Rick Perry Office of the Governor P.O. Box 12428 Austin, Texas 78711

UPDATED: What You Can Do to Help Save Kenneth

2007-08-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

As interest continues to grow in Kenneth's case, we wanted to remind visitors of what they can do to help the Fosters and the rest of the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign fight this gross injustice:

1) Learn about the case by visiting the Free Kenneth Foster website and reading any of the excellent news stories posted on this blog.

2) Join the Save Kennth Foster Campaign. Our weekly meetings are posted regularly on this blog.

2) Donate to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign. Donations can be sent to:

To Save Kenneth Foster, #831766
Velocity Credit Union
P.O. Box 1089
Austin, TX 78767-9947

3) Contact Texas legislatures, encouraging them to pressure the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Rick Perry to grant a stay. You can fill-out a form letter through this link.

4) Write a clemency letter directly to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Rick Perry. Letters can be mailed to Kenneth's criminal attorney, Keith Hampton, who will hand deliver them. Keith's address is:

Keith S. Hampton
Attorney at Law
1103 Nueces Street
Austin, Texas 78701

5) Attend our August 18 event, "A Night in Solidarity with Kenneth Foster." It will be held at the Carver Community Center in San Antonio at 226 N. Hackberry (between Commerce and East Houston). Doors open at 5pm. Admission is $5 and will go to the continued work of the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign. The main speaker will be Mario Africa, who also gave a memorable speech at the July 21 rally for Kenneth in Austin. Musical performers will be Get Money Click, SLYKAT, Precise of Throedville Entertainment, Bubble Rap Inc., and Kenneth's wife Ja'vlin, featuring his daugher Nydesha Foster.

6) Attend the August 21 event in Austin. We will gather at 11th and Congress at 5pm and march to the Governor's mansion to make our voices heard!

The Court of Criminal Appeals decision was a setback, but by no means the final word in this campaign. We are in this to win. Join us as we continue the struggle to SAVE KENNETH FOSTER!!!!

Watch/Listen to Democracy Now! show on Kenneth!!

2007-08-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Follow this link to watch or listen to the one-hour nationally-syndicated show on Kenneth!!!

Kenneth Foster Case on Democracy Now!

2007-08-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

The nationally-syndicated program, Democracy Now!, will be dedicating its entire show tomorrow to Kenneth's case! This is excellent exposure for Kenneth, especially at this urgent stage in the case. The on-air guests will include:

Nydesha Foster - Kenneth's daughter
Tasha Narez-Foster - Kenneth's wife
Lawrence Foster - Kenneth's grandfather
Kenneth Foster, Sr. - Kenneth's father
Bryan McCann - Member, Save Kenneth Foster Campaign

To find out how you can view or hear this important show, visit the Democracy Now! website to learn about affiliate stations.

Amnesty International Action Alert for Kenneth

2007-08-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

PUBLIC AI Index: AMR 51/131/2007

8 August 2007

UA 205/07 Death penalty / Legal concern

USA (Texas) Kenneth Eugene Foster (m), black, aged 30

Kenneth Foster is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 30 August. He was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Michael LaHood, a white man, in 1996. Mauriceo Brown, the person who shot LaHood, was executed in 2006. Kenneth Foster, in a car some 30 metres from the crime when it was committed, was convicted under the “law of parties”, the 1974 Texas law under which the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime is abolished and each may be held equally culpable. Kenneth Foster maintains that he did not know that Brown would either rob or kill Michael LaHood. There is evidence not heard at trial that the murder was an unplanned act committed by Mauriceo Brown, as the latter himself claimed.

On the evening of 14 August 1996, Mauriceo Brown, DeWayne Dillard, Julius Steen and Kenneth Foster drove around San Antonio in Foster’s grandfather’s rental car, with Foster driving. They committed two armed robberies, with Steen and Brown robbing at gunpoint first a woman and then a man and two women. Then, in the early hours of 15 August, they stopped outside the house of Michael LaHood to which LaHood and a female companion, Mary Patrick, were returning. According to the trial evidence, Mary Patrick approached Foster’s car and asked who they were. When she realized she did not know the occupants, she walked back towards Michael LaHood. Mauriceo Brown got out of the car, approached LaHood, demanded his wallet, and shot him. Not long afterwards, Kenneth Foster and his three companions were stopped by police and arrested. Kenneth Foster, who was aged 19 at the time, gave police a statement in which he said that, “Mauriceo jumped out of the car…We had tried to get Mauriceo to get in the car and leave... We just wanted to leave… I heard a gunshot…I did not know, at the time, that Mauriceo had a gun. Mauriceo trotted back to the car… He was gasping... I asked him, what happened, what had he done. He didn’t reply”.

Mauriceo Brown and Kenneth Foster were tried jointly for capital murder. Brown admitted being the gunman but denied intent to kill. At the trial Brown testified that there had been no discussion of robbing LaHood before he got out of the car. Foster pleaded not guilty. Both were sentenced to death. Mauriceo Brown was executed on 19 July 2006. Neither Julius Steen nor DeWayne Dillard was prosecuted for the LaHood murder.

To convict Kenneth Foster of capital murder under the law of parties, the prosecution had to prove that there was a conspiracy between him and Brown to rob LaHood, and that Foster should have anticipated that murder might have occurred during the robbery. The prosecution’s key witness was Julius Steen. Although Steen testified that he had not been sure of Brown’s intent when he left the car and that there had been no discussion in the car about committing a robbery, he said that “it was kind of like, I guess understood what was probably fixing to go down.” Asked by the prosecutor if he had understood that when Brown got out of the car, there was going to be a robbery, Steen testified that “I would say I kind of thought it”. He also said that he was not sure of Foster’s understanding in this regard. Affirming the death sentence in 1999, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals observed that the case against Foster “rested largely on Steen’s testimony as an accomplice”. The prosecution had pointed to the two earlier robberies committed at gunpoint as a reason Foster should have anticipated that a murder could have occurred.

Neither Julius Steen nor DeWayne Dillard (who did not testify at the trial) was interviewed by Kenneth Foster’s trial lawyers. This was because each was facing charges in other cases, and their own lawyers refused to allow them to be interviewed while those cases were still pending. Since the trial, both have given statements. Dillard testified at a state appeal that before the shooting, Kenneth Foster had told him that he wanted Brown and Steen to stop committing the robberies, and because Dillard had known the two longer, asked him to persuade them to stop. Dillard testified that he himself had believed there would be no more robberies because he had taken his gun back after the two earlier crimes. He said that the four were heading back to his home when they came to a dead end and, after turning the car around, had stopped when they saw Mary Patrick apparently flagging them down. Dillard testified that Brown had grabbed the gun but that Foster was unlikely to have seen that; that there was no agreement or plan to rob anyone; and that no one had encouraged Brown to do what he did. He said that after the shot was heard, Foster had appeared surprised and panicked and started to drive away, but Dillard had told him to stop and wait for Brown.

Julius Steen signed an affidavit in 2003 clarifying his trial testimony, clarification that had not been elicited by the defence because their cross-examination was inevitably weak due to their lack of pre-trial contact with this witness. Steen recalled that it was only when he had seen Mauriceo Brown standing opposite Michael LaHood that he understood “what might be going down. At that point, and not before, I thought that Brown might be robbing the man”. He stated that “There was no agreement that I am aware of for Brown to commit a robbery at the LaHood residence. I do not believe that Foster and Brown ever agreed to commit a robbery. In my opinion, I don’t think that Foster thought that Brown was going to commit a robbery. When Brown got back in the car, we were all shocked. Even Brown looked shocked. I don’t think that Brown knew why he shot the man and was surprised that he did”. In a recent appeal, Foster’s lawyer has argued: “Foster clearly did not anticipate what Brown himself did not foresee. Brown clearly acted on his own independent impulse, and not pursuant to the imaginary robbery conspiracy that has trapped Kenneth Foster on death row”.

In 2005, a federal district judge found a “fundamental constitutional defect in Foster’s sentence”. In 1982, the US Supreme Court had ruled in Enmund v. Florida – in the case of a man who had been in a parked car while his accomplices committed robbery and murder in a house nearby – that the death penalty is disproportionate if it is imposed on a defendant who did not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill the victim. The Court modified this rule five years later in Tison v. Arizona when it held that a defendant who participates in a crime that leads to murder and whose “mental state is one of reckless indifference to the value of human life” may be sentenced to death. The federal judge ruled that Foster’s jury had not been asked to determine if he had any intent to kill LaHood, and that this failure represented a misapplication of the law. However, Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.

Since the USA resumed executions in 1977, 1,089 prisoners have been put to death; 398 of them in Texas. There have been 32 executions in the USA in 2007, 19 of them in Texas. The UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of those facing the Death Penalty state that “capital punishment may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts”. The fact is that Kenneth Foster did not kill Michael LaHood, and there is compelling evidence that he did not plan, intend or anticipate that he would be robbed or killed either.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language, in your own words (please include Kenneth Foster’s inmate number, #999232):

- expressing sympathy for the family of Michael LaHood, and explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the manner of his death or to downplay the suffering it will have caused;

- noting that the person who actually shot Michael LaHood, Mauriceo Brown, was executed last year;

- expressing concern at the use of the law of parties in this case, noting evidence that the shooting was the spontaneous act of Mauriceo Brown, and that all those involved in the crime have said that there was no conspiracy to rob Michael LaHood, which would make Kenneth Foster innocent of capital murder;

- noting that the two other accomplices in the car were never prosecuted in this crime, and yet as the evidence stands today their and Foster’s culpability in it would appear to be similar or the same;

- calling for Kenneth Foster to be granted clemency.

APPEALS TO:

Rissie Owens, Presiding Officer, Board of Pardons and Paroles, Executive Clemency Section

8610 Shoal Creek Boulevard, Austin, TX 78757, USA

Fax: +1 512 463 8120

Salutation: Dear Ms Owens

Governor Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, P.O. Box 12428, Austin, Texas 78711-2428, USA
Fax: +1 512 463 1849

Salutation: Dear Governor

COPIES TO: diplomatic representatives of USA accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Denies Kenneth's Petition

2007-08-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

The Save Kenneth Foster Campaign has officially entered emergency mode with
the announcement that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has denied
Kenneth's final appeal. This outrageous decision shows yet again how
backward the Texas injustice system truly is. Now it is up to the Board of
Pardons and Paroles and Governor Rick Perry to grant Kenneth clemency. It
is also a call to all of us to push harder than ever to SAVE KENNETH
FOSTER!!!!

The State of Texas intends to execute Kenneth Foster on August 30, despite
the fact that he did not murder anyone. Unlike any other state in this
country, Texas utilizes a unique statute called the Law of Parties which
allows the State to subject a person to death even
though he did not kill, intend to kill, help or encourage anyone to do so.

Meanwhile, the Save Kenneth Foster, Jr. Campaign is definitely picking up
steam. We held a highly successful rally on June 21st in downtown
Austin. The rally drew over 200 people who marched and heard from fantastic
speakers and performers. Since then, media coverage has really picked up,
with recent editorials in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram and the Austin
American Statesman calling for clemency for Kenneth Foster, Jr. We have had
radio coverage on Chuck D's show on Air America, Democracy Now, and
more. We have much more planned in the coming weeks, so read below about
how to get involved. To read the latest news coverage:
http://savekenneth.blogspot.com/

Save Kenneth Foster, Jr. Campaign Meeting
Wed. August 8th
Cepeda Branch
651 N. Pleasant Valley Rd., 78702
512) 974-7372
Southeast corner of Pleasant Valley and 7th St.
*****************************************

FIGHTING TO SAVE KENNETH FOSTER JR.
Family Members Speatk Out !

Tuesday, August 14 at 6:30 PM
Carver Library
At Rosewood Ave. and Angelina St.

A Roundtable Featuring:

Kenneth Foster Sr. - Father of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Beverly Fisher - First Cousin of Kenneth Foster, Jr.
Sandra Reed - Mother of Death Row Prisoner Rodney Reed
Jeannine Scott - Wife of Texas Prisoner Michael Scott
Delia Perez Meyer - Sister of Death Row Prisoner Louis Castro Perez

Kenneth faces an August 30th execution date. Family members discuss
the case and how to stop this and all executions !

Sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty
For more info contact cedpaustin@gmail.com or call 494-0667
***********************************************

Save the Dates!

Rally to Save Kenneth Foster, Jr in San Antonio, Texas!
Saturday, August 18th, beginning at 5pm
Carver Community Cultural Center
226 N. Hackberry
San Antonio, TX 78202

Emergency Rally to Save Kenneth Foster!
Tuesday, August 21st, 5pm
11th and Congress, Austin
We will meet and march to the Governor's Mansion to make our voices heard!

Kenneth's Letter to Governor Rick Perry

2007-08-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Kenneth E. Foster, Jr.
#999232
Polunsky Unit (Death Row)
3872 FM 350 South
Livingston, TX 77351

Texas Governor Rick Perry
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711

Dear Governor Perry,

Unaware of what I could possibly say that could make a difference, I decided to grasp this opportunity to write to you from my heart, because I believe that God declares for us to live each day to the fullest. While I know that you will be bombarded with letters from people, spoken to by legal representatives and addressed by the media, this is written on a personal basis.

I know that you will have detailed information about my case and the Law of Parties. However, please never forget that although I did not protest when Mauriceo Brown wanted to commit robberies, later I recognized that this was wrong to go along with, and out of respect for my grandfather, I said I had to stop. After I said I wanted to go home, Mauriceo Brown got out of the car to talk to Mary Patrick, and got into an argument with Michael LaHood, which ended with Mauriceo Brown shooting him, of which I had no foreknowledge and would never have permitted, had I known it were going to happen.

I would like to talk from another perspective. What can I say about this death row journey? It has been a curse and a blessing, because as ironic as it may be most humans fear the only thing they are promised at birth and that is death. And as the irony continues, one (here) learns to live by facing death. It’s a stunning process. Yet, for each man he experiences something different. I’ve observed some of the most complex and intricate human behavior probably on this earth - enough experience to more than likely surpass the credentials of any anthropologist or psychologist. I’ve watched the dreams and nightmares, the hope and despair. I could write a book on it and speak volumes to it. But, I will only say that I thank God for allowing me to journey through this keeping my sanity and being anointed with a gift to learn, grow, and pass on positivity.

There’s so much that the world doesn’t see - so much that politics will bar, but regardless of it all, a man still has the opportunity to tap into the beauty of humanity and experience that regardless of his outside circumstances. I just wish that you all could see it. I do realize that you feel you have a certain Justice to serve. I’ve come so far in my journey that I no longer hold spite, because I’ve been granted an Understanding that is keeping me. It was a quote that I read once that said - "To maim and destroy the body of man is no deed of recognition for valor, whether in war or in mortal conflict. But, to save a body, which is the temple of the soul, is an act and deed of the God-like." Those words changed me, because it was just as much about me as anyone else.

Governor Perry, I don’t think that I have to detail why I feel my situation is unjust - either personally or politically. I believe that all the evidence and letters will speak so loud to you. However, I think it’s important to tell you that I have tried to use this situation as a transformation process. Everyday I have tried to be an exception to the stigmas and stereotypes. I wanted to show that a man here could be more than his error or labels. And so, as I submitted myself, I found the heart to pray for you and your family, the victim and his family, my co-defendants and their family. I’ve discovered (and hopefully others will, too,) that the pain, sorrow and compensation is not taken care of through simply saying I’m sorry or through hundreds of executions, rather giving love everyday, helping someone, speaking truth to power - showing that one man with courage can be a majority. The only Joy I have is in educating, reforming and revitalizing; and if you believe it or not I do this because of you all, not myself. Because if I did anything for me I’d be a wretch, but through you all (those that love me or not,) I’ve found humanity embracing me. I’m thankful, regardless.

You’re a history maker, Governor Perry, and I am a part of your history and I think what happens to me will be a relevant part of history. I wish I could appeal not only to your morale and conscience, but to your soul. I wish we could talk about the last 10 years and everything between. I wish we could view the way each life through this process has been touched. Often the Divine is revealed through the hardest trials and tribulations.

My only plea is that I wish I could live for the sake of my little daughter who will be so deeply wounded to not have her daddy. I do not want to be set free. I want to pay for what I did. I drove a car and let a man rob other people. That is not a capital crime. I allowed Mauriceo Brown to get back in the car. Because of my own blatant shock and disbelief at what had just occurred, I helped him leave a crime scene. That is not a capital crime. I never sought nor desired that Michael LaHood, Jr. be killed.

I wrote this letter from the heart, just trying to show you how one can transform, how beauty does persist, how change can come. I prayed different Psalms and Proverbs over this letter. I’ve passionately spoken all of my request for Forgiveness, Peace, Life, Justice, Freedom, Love, Understanding to The Creator and His Creation. I stand on the Faith knowing that all of the roles we have played in this walk of life will have a greater purpose. I’m glad to have had this opportunity to speak with you.

With God’s Love,

Kenneth Foster"

Donate to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign!!!

2007-08-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

This isn't the first time this information has been posted, but the campaign's need for financial support is growing every day. We are thrilled and honored by the visibility and support Kenneth is receiving. With every success, however, comes higher stakes and greater responsibility. For instance, our planned event in San Antonio promises to be a very expensive endeavor. Therefore, this is a reminder that we have opened a bank account for donations that will be used to support our ongoing work to SAVE KENNETH FOSTER!!!!

You can send donations to:

Velocity Credit Union
PO BOX 1089
Austin, Texas 78767-9947

Acct. Name : To Save Kenneth Foster
Acct #: 831766.1

Kenneth Coverage in the French Newspaper "Le Monde"

2007-08-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

Sentenced to die for having seen a crime
Le Monde
Nicolas Bourcier
August 4th, 2007

DR for death row. Two initials marked on Kenneth Foster's white
pants. Two indelible letters to underline, as if it were necessary,
that the countdown has started. Since May this young death row
prisoner, 30-year old, knows the Texas authorities have set his
execution date for August 30th, a Thursday, around 6pm. A date and a
time programmed 10 years ago, almost to the day, when he was
sentenced to death by a court in San Antonio not for having killed
someone but for not having ever, according to the jury, premeditated
or anticipated a crime and having ran away in a car with the
murderer. Kenneth Foster is here, he stands in one of the visiting
cages at the Polunsky Unit, home of Texas death row, made of steel
and concrete, lost somewhere on a country road in Livingston, a small
ordinary town north of Houston. The guard locks the door and
mechanically unlocks the cuffs behind his back.

He sits down. He sets his watch down in front of the safety glass
partition as to better control time, the forty-five minutes granted
for the interview. He smiles. "Hello" he says while picking up the
phone. "How are you?" Apparently calm, Kenneth Foster does not
demonstrate any signs of weakness, no attempt to dominate his fear.
Tall guy with immediate charm, he speaks well, aptly uses the flow of
words such as the rap musician he would have liked to become before
his arrest.

He keeps the hard times to himself, as to protect himself, within the
four walls of his tiny cell, of the fatal instant and from the
intrusion by the department of corrections, which take a prisoner to
his death in Huntsville, a near-by town where Texas executes its
death row prisoners by lethal injection. Yesterday it was Lonnie
Earl Johnson's turn, a companion, "a friend" whom he had known for
nine years. "Those moments are hard, they strike the spirit,
challenge the intellect and the emotions… One keeps looking at one's
watch."

He says he does not have any "hatred or anger, only rage but the
positive kind that feeds energy, the fuel". The system? "I know it is
unfair, I know the underlying dose of racism in the United States.
But it is up to us to be intelligent, at least as much as those who
lead us." Not once does he accuse those who sentenced him based on
the color of his skin. He will not mention the victim's father,
Michael Lahood, a white attorney in San Antonio. Kenneth Foster does
not raise the hopeless injustice of being born on the wrong side of
the social fence. He simply sticks to the facts, recalls that he
never killed anyone and that he was incapable of predicting that
Mauriceo Brown, one of the three men he went out with that night of
August 1996, was going to kill a certain Michael Lahood Jr.

On two occasions that night, he attempted to stop this night trip and
to leave the small group he hardly knew and that had just committed
two pathetic robberies, stealing $300 from passers-by picked at
random. When the shot was fired, he said he did not understand what
was going on, he saw nothing, only the pale and panting face of
Mauriceo Brown who had come out of the car a few seconds ago to
follow a girl in a private property. Kenneth Foster got scared. In
one move, he put his foot down on the throttle. He was 19 years old
and had just borrowed his grandfather's car, the only member of his
family who cared for him.

Then came the trial, those "neverending lines of errors", this first
court-appointed attorney "who was obviously a beginner", the
magistrate who refused to try him separately from the murderer, the
testimony of a confused Julius Steen, the third man who will change
his deposition on two occasions years later, to affirm that he had
not played any direct or indirect part in the death of young Lahood.

Kenneth Foster was tried under the law of parties, which allows the
sentencing of secondary participants to a crime. A law passed by half
a dozen states in the 70's, but that only Texas uses for capital
punishment. In total, experts estimate that this law has been a
determining factor in the execution of twenty death row prisoners.

The death row prisoner nods gently, takes a breath. Five times during
his appeals he asked to be re-tried, five times his request was
denied. Those years of procedure have only brought him technically
closer to death, one court order after another. "Once started, this
machinery is very hard to stop" he explains, almost in a professional
manner.

Also sentenced to death, Mauriceo Brown was executed on July 17th,
2006. Kenneth Foster says it hit him, but hardly makes a comment: "I
was never very close to him, not even here in prison."

Kenneth Foster still hopes the nine Judges of the CCA in Austin will
review his sentence in the next few days, or that the Board of
Pardons and Paroles and Governor Perry, who has never granted
clemency, will grant him a new trial. He says: "Yes Texas is the
state where the largest number of prisoners are executed in this
country, nineteen since the beginning of the year." And states: "I do
no want prayers or candles. I want people to fight and stand up for
me, to show these politicians that some people think differently."

Kenneth Foster looks at his watch and signals we have little time
left. "It's getting close" he whispers in the phone. On his fingers,
he counts the number of scheduled executions before his: four out of
the 390 death row prisoners confined within these walls. "I have to
be vigilant and precise with the numbers. Each decision by the
authorities is important for me."

He says he gets information from his attorneys, his loved ones who
visit him regularly, from the radio mostly the public channel NPR.
"Can you imagine, we don't even have a television…" An additional
punishment by the system, according to him, a daily sanction which
comes on top of the "privilege" to make one five-minute phone call
every ninety days. He adds, while picking up his watch: "Each death
sentence is a regression, a defeat for society. In any case it will
never be a solution no matter what the crime, as unforgivable as it
may be." He stands up. His 13-year old daughter is due to visit him
later this week. He puts the phone down and smiles one last time.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-941555,0.html?xtor=RSS-3210

Kenneth on Huffington Post!!!!

2007-08-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

Below is moving commentary from a friend of Michael LaHood, Jr. that appeared on the incredibly popular Huffington Post.

Kenneth Foster, Jr.: An Innocent Man Texas Will Soon Execute

Posted July 31, 2007 | 11:51 PM (EST)

Get to know this name: Kenneth Foster, Jr. You are going to be hearing a lot of it the next 30 days because I have a personal stake in this matter.

You see, one night in August 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood, was murdered by Mauriceo Brown. And Kenneth Foster, Jr. was driving for Mauriceo that night. I don't know what the circumstances of Kenneth's involvement were beyond the fact that he was still in the car when Mauriceo pulled the trigger that sent a bullet through my friend's brain, ending his life immediately.

Was he being forced to drive? Or was he along for the ride? I don't care. Kenneth deserves and is receiving punishment for his role in the tragedy that occurred that night. But whatever punishment Kenneth does deserve for his role in my friend's cruel murder, execution should not ever have been (or be) an option. He did not pull the trigger, or encourage Mr. Brown to pull it in any way, nor was he even aware that the murder was being contemplated or had been committed until after the fact. His punishment should not be execution.

But we are in Texas and in Texas, barbaric laws prevail, like something out of Beowulf or the Old Testament or Reservoir Dogs -- one of the very few movies I could not watch to the end for its unspeakable cruelty. Never mind that we are in the 21^st century. Never mind that we are supposed to be modern.

I miss Michael, my dear friend, whom I nicknamed 'Chainsaw.' He was a big, musclebound, softhearted jabber-mouth, always talking and always cracking jokes. Mike was full of life. And although he was a body builder I never saw him angry and I never saw him so much as hurt anyone. His joy was infectious -- everyone wanted to hang out with Mike and the ladies loved him, although he didn't quite have the confidence to take advantage of it (yet). Why he chose a long-haired, poetry writing, guitar playing miscreant and reformed pothead/high school dropout like myself I will never know. But I loved him dearly. The only time I ever cheated in college or university was for Mike. He hated poetry and asked if he could use one of my poems for his Freshman Comp? How could I say no?

I still remember eating chicken fried steak with him and D-Day -- the third and most successful leg of our triumviral friendship -- at Maggies at 3:00am after clubbing, back when the three of us attended the local junior college, were obsessed with the opposite sex but too stupid to realize they were just as obsessed with us as we were with them. God, how I'd give anything to have him back. Thinking of him brings a tear to my eyes even now. What makes it worse is that I'd returned from living out of the country a few months before he was killed. A new career kept me busy. We kept postponing getting together. My last words to Mike -- two weeks before he was murdered -- were a cliché for all clichés: "We'll do it next weekend, buddy, we've got all the time in the world." I couldn't hear the clock ticking. I wish I'd listened closer.

And for that I hated Mauriceo and his gang even more, and for a long time. But the execution of a young man who didn't even kill Mike? That's not justice. It's senseless vengeance, a barbarism cloaked in the black robes of justice.

Never knowing that a friend of one of the men involved in Mike's murder might reach out to me for help I wrote this two years ago about the death penalty:

Whenever people ask me about the death penalty I always reply: when you make it to the Pearly Gates, and Saint Peter asks, "justice or mercy?" Which will you choose?

Usually they sputter or blurt something out like, "The death penalty doesn't have anything to do with that." I reply, "The death penalty has everything to do with that. You just can't see it."

Then they say, "What if it happened to someone you know." And I reply, "In 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood was murdered. And I don't want his killer to die. I want his killer to repent. And then spend the rest of his life in prison helping other prisoners with less onerous sentences to see the light."

That's when they say, "You're a softy, wishy-washy feel-good, self-helping liberal wimp." By that time its too late to ask them, "What requires more courage: revenge or forgiveness?"

I prefer mercy, wimp or not.

Kenneth did not ask for my help and he's already accepted his fate. Someone he helped asked me to help him. I cannot live with myself if I don't try. Wimp or not.

He is scheduled to be executed on the 30th of August.

More Excellent Interviews!!!!

2007-08-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today was a great media day for Kenneth. The second part of the Star-Telegram series on his case appeared (below in full), as did an interview he did with the Socialist Worker newspaper.

It is safe to say that Governor Rick Perry, who has overseen more executions than any other governor in Texas history, is experiencing an unprecedented level of pressure. Let's keep it up!

'I shouldn't have to abandon my humanity, my dignity'

By BOB RAY SANDERS

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Kenneth Foster Jr. has an appointment he hopes not to keep.

He is scheduled to die Aug. 30 in the Texas prison system's death chamber.

If it comes to that, Foster says he is ready. But as I pointed out in Sunday's column, Foster never should have gotten the death penalty in the murder of Michael LaHood of San Antonio.

In fact, Mauriceo Brown, the man who killed LaHood in 1996, was executed a year ago for the crime.

Foster and two other people were with Brown most of the evening that LaHood was killed, but all the evidence -- including Brown's testimony at trial -- clearly shows that neither Foster nor the other men knew about, planned, participated in or anticipated Brown's act.

But under Texas' "law of parties," and partly because Foster was tried along with Brown, he was convicted and given a death sentence.

Although a federal judge overturned that sentence, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

Foster does not deserve to die, and he and others are fighting to stop the execution through more appeals to the courts, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and directly to the governor's office.

As promised Sunday, I want to share some of Foster's thoughts on his scheduled execution, Texas' Death Row, and the victim and his family.

"I got a strong heart. I got a strong heart," Foster told me on a recent visit to Death Row. "I don't have any fear toward death. If we have to walk that path, then I'll walk it."

He added, "If they do murder me -- and it will be murder -- then I'm prepared."

Foster has become active in fighting for inmates' rights on Death Row, and like another former inmate we knew -- Gary Graham, executed in 2000 while still maintaining his innocence -- he said he doesn't plan to go to his death quietly after "eating nine cheeseburgers that you can't digest."

He stated emphatically: "I won't be walking. I won't have no last meal. If they want me executed, they are going to have to throw me on that gurney.

"It's genocide. Covert genocide. They are approaching 400 murders here."

Texas has executed 398 people since capital punishment was reinstated in 1974.

In reference to LaHood, Foster said: "I've been accused of not reaching out to the victim's family. We never wanted the family to feel we were indifferent to their loss. I pray for that family. They don't know.

"I thought it would be rude to them for me to write a letter ... My father wrote to them, and a friend of the family's wrote them."

He noted that he's been getting a lot of hate mail (from people sympathetic to the LaHood family) on a Web site set up by his supporters, yet he continuously thinks about the people whom the victim left behind.

"If they want atonement, I can give them atonement," he said. "If they want vengeance, I can't help them.

"I have a lot of respect for that family .... I've repeated to my supporters to keep the victim in mind."

Foster, whose 11-year-old daughter was only 8 months old when he was charged with this crime, said his child comes to Texas from California once a month to visit him.

"She's a soldier," he said of his daughter.

As for his experience on the nation's busiest Death Row, he said: "There's something ugly and beautiful about Death Row. It's ugly what we have to go through here. It's a beautiful process with what you go through spiritually and emotionally."

He vowed that no matter what happens, there are some things to which he simply will not succumb.

"I can't surrender my humanity," he said. "Yeah, I made a mistake; let me correct it. I shouldn't have to abandon my humanity, my dignity."

Humanity should compel us to try to save this innocent man's life.

JOIN THE FIGHT

Contact the governor's office or the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to object to the execution of Kenneth Foster Jr.

Gov. Rick Perry

Mail: State Capitol, P.O. Box 12428, Austin, TX 78711-2428

Telephone: 512-463-2000

Fax: 512-463-1849

E-mail: Use the form at www.governor.state.tx.us/contact

Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Mail: P.O. Box 13401, Capitol Station, Austin, TX 78711

Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775
bobray@star-telegram.com

Ft. Worth/Dallas Star-Telegram in Support of Kenneth!

2007-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

This is a truly excellent article! Honestly, I do not believe we could have asked for a more pointed and effective editorial...in two parts no less!

Posted on Sun, Jul. 29, 2007

An appointment with death despite the evidence

By Bob Ray Sanders
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Another trip to Death Row.

Another man scheduled to die on the gurney in Texas' infamous killing chamber.

Another human being who does not deserve this tragic fate.

And another case that speaks to the absurdity of how capital punishment is applied in general throughout this country, but particularly in the Lone Star State.

The case of Kenneth Foster Jr., scheduled to die next month for a 1996 murder in San Antonio, is further proof of how cruel, capricious, unjust and utterly insane our death penalty laws have become.

Because of this tainted system, whether you believe in capital punishment or not, a man who did not plan or commit a murder will die Aug. 30 unless somebody -- a judge, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and/or the governor -- has the heart and the guts to stop it.

On Aug. 14, 1996, Foster -- who was 19 at the time -- was driving around with two guys he recently had met, Dewayne Dillard and Julius Steen. They were in a car that had been rented by Foster's grandfather, the man who basically had raised him since he was in the fourth grade because "my mother and father ran the streets," he said.

According to Steen's testimony, they were "just goofing off, more or less, and smoking some weed" when they decided to pick up a fourth person, Mauriceo Brown, who rode with them into the night.

Testimony showed that at some point, Brown announced that because they had a gun, they ought to "jack" someone.

With Foster as the driver, Steen and Brown first got out of the car and robbed a Hispanic woman at gunpoint and later robbed a man and two women in a parking lot.

On their way home, they came off the freeway and ended up in a residential neighborhood and saw, according to court documents, "a scantily-clad woman, Mary Patrick, who approached them and demanded to know why they were following her."

As it turned out, Patrick had been following her friend Michael LaHood to his home, and the car driven by Foster was right behind their two cars until they came to a dead end and turned around.

After seeing Patrick standing at the edge of the driveway, they assumed there was a party going on. They stopped and chatted with her for a few seconds, when she started cursing Steen and accusing the group of following her.

Foster put his foot on the gas and prepared to leave, he said, knowing he needed to get the car back to his grandfather. But Brown jumped out of the car, he said, went up the steep driveway and started talking to LaHood, who was more than 80 feet away from the car.

He said he heard a "pop," and when Brown got back to the car, "We're asking -- everybody's asking -- what went down? What happened?"

Brown had shot LaHood.

Shortly afterward, the four men would be arrested and later charged with capital murder.

Dillard and Steen were never made available to Foster's attorney while the district attorney held other cases over them. The district attorney chose to try Foster and Brown together, and the judge refused to sever the cases.

Foster was convicted along with Brown under the Texas "law of parties," even though he never participated in, intended for or anticipated a murder.

Prosecutors, with the help of testimony from Steen, made jurors believe that Foster had conspired in the killing and should have anticipated it.

"[Foster] was a victim of a statute that was never intended by its authors to be used this way," said Austin attorney Keith S. Hampton, who recently filed a second application for a writ of habeas corpus with the district court in San Antonio and an application for commutation of sentence with the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

"I talked to the authors, and they intended [the statute] to be used in conspiracy cases," Hampton said.

Steen has since said that he was pressured by the prosecutors to give the trial testimony and has signed an affidavit clarifying that he did not intend to imply that Foster was aware of what Brown was about to do. Brown himself testified that neither Foster nor the others had planned a robbery or a shooting of LaHood, nor did they know what he was doing.

At least one of the jurors has said in an affidavit "that he would have given a different verdict if he had known that Kenneth Foster did not anticipate that Brown would take the gun when he got out of the car, did not anticipate Brown would shoot LaHood, or that he tried to drive away when he heard the shot," according to court documents.

Federal District Judge Royal Furgeson of San Antonio overturned Foster's death sentence in 2005, saying:

"There was no evidence before Foster's sentencing jury which would have supported a finding that Foster either actually killed LaHood or that Foster intended to kill LaHood or another person. Therein lays the fundamental constitutional defect in Foster's sentence .... Therefore, Foster's death sentence is not supported by the necessary factual finding mandated [by the U.S. Supreme Court] and, for that reason, cannot withstand Eighth Amendment scrutiny."

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision. Last spring, the U.S. Supreme Court, which was considering three other Texas death penalty cases at the time, did not take Foster's appeal.

Thus, the subsequent writ application and request for commutation have been filed in an effort to save Foster's life. His supporters also have been writing to the governor and the pardons and paroles board.

"I've never tried to portray myself as an angel," Foster told me on a recent visit to Death Row. "I take responsibility. I was a follower. I was a fool for being there."

He added: "We're not saying I never did anything wrong; for this case, I did nothing wrong. I didn't conspire, I didn't participate, and I didn't plan."

Mauriceo Brown was executed for this crime on July 19, 2006. Foster's execution is set for Aug. 30.

Steen pleaded guilty to two capital murder cases and received a sentence of 35 years to life, and Dillard was given a life sentence.

Does Foster deserve a more severe sentence than Steen and Dillard?

No.

Texas has become the "capital" in "capital punishment," and it is time for us to put an end to the madness.

We can start by making sure this one innocent man's life is spared.

NOTE: In Wednesday's column, I'll tell you more about my conversation with Foster -- his views on dying, Death Row and his feelings for the victim and his family.

Austin-American Statesman Editorial in Support of Kenneth!!!

2007-07-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

EDITORIAL
Backward Texas law may make man pay with life for deed he didn't do
EDITORIAL BOARD

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Kenneth Foster didn't commit murder. But that won't stop the State of Texas from executing the Austin native Aug. 30.

It was Mauriceo Brown who shot and killed Michael LaHood in San Antonio 12 years ago — not Foster. Even the prosecution agrees that Foster was 85 feet away from the murder scene. But because of the Texas Law of Parties, that simply does not matter.

Under the 33-year-old law of parties, a person can be held responsible for a crime committed by someone else. According to the law, Foster "should have anticipated" that Brown would commit murder.

Though the law has its supporters, the application in the Foster case highlights flaws.

Only a few states have a law of parties as severe as Texas and no other state applies it as frequently to capital murder cases as Texas. About 80 inmates are on death row awaiting execution under the law of parties. They may not have done the actual killing, but they were along for the ride.

In a case similar to Foster's, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment "does not allow the death penalty for a person who is a minor participant in a felony and does not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill."

New testimony shows Foster didn't play a major role in the shooting that took the life of LaHood on Aug. 14, 1996.

In the original trial, Foster's court-appointed lawyer failed to bring up key points that might have vindicated Foster. The same lawyer submitted a 20-page appellate brief in the Foster case — laughably short for a death penalty case. The lawyer also failed to pursue key testimony.

When Keith Hampton, an Austin lawyer skilled in criminal appellate work, took over Foster's case, he remembers thinking, "Wait a minute, this guy is on death row?" He uncovered new testimony that ultimately won a stay in Foster's case. Unfortunately, the ruling was overturned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Foster was no angel. He and three other men in the car — Brown, Julius Steen and Dwayne Dillard — had committed two armed robberies earlier that night. But the new testimony from Steen and Dillard shows that the men had no role in planning or carrying out a murder.

According to Steen and Dillard, Foster repeatedly pleaded with them and Brown, while in the car, to return home before they encountered LaHood. He also tried to drive away when he heard the gunshots, but Steen and Dillard made him stop and wait for Brown, who was executed for his part in the crime last year.

With a month left until Foster's scheduled execution, his supporters are left with two options: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals must rule in favor of Foster, or the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles must recommend commuting Foster's sentence. If the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends commutation, Gov. Rick Perry decides Foster's fate.

Considering Perry's track record on commuting executions, it is unlikely that Perry will decide in favor of Foster, even though he should.

Neither the governor nor the Court of Criminal Appeals should allow the state to execute a man for a crime someone else committed. Foster should be punished for his part in the robberies. But the state shouldn't take his life for failing to anticipate that his friend would commit murder.

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/07/28/0728lawofparties_edit.html

Upcoming Save Kenneth Foster Campaign Meetings

2007-07-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

Wed. August 1st
Terrazas Branch
1105 East César Chávez St., 78702
512) 974-3625
One block east of IH-35 on Cesar Chavez

Wed. August 8th
Cepeda Branch
651 N. Pleasant Valley Rd., 78702
512) 974-7372
Southeast corner of Pleasant Valley and 7th St.

Wed August 15th
Carver Branch (pending verification)
1161 Angelina, 78702
512) 974-1010

Hope to see you there!

Reminder: Fundraiser for the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign TOMORROW NIGHT!!!

2007-07-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

Our friends at TMN have been so moved and impressed by the hard work around Kenenth's case, that they have agreed to contribute half of the proceeds from their upcoming benefit to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign! The success of this event depends on attendance, so please plan to be there!

WHO: Texas Moratorium Network
WHAT: "It Came From Austin!!!!" - A Benefit for Texas Moratorium Network and
the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign
WHEN: Saturday July 28, 2007 - 8:00 PM
WHERE: The Scoot Inn, 1308 E. 4th, Austin TX 78702
www.eastinns.com
ADMISSION: $5-$10 sliding scale, 21+

TEXAS MORATORIUM NETWORK PRESENTS
"IT CAME FROM AUSTIN", A LIVE MUSIC/PERFORMANCE BENEFIT
SHOWCASE TO RAISE AWARENESS OF TEXAS DEATH
PENALTY ISSUES.

AUSTIN, TX - The Texas Moratorium Network
(TMN) is organizing a benefit
show to help raise awareness of current death penalty issues in Texas,
raise money to fight the death penalty and gain new members. The benefit
is July 28 in Austin at the Scoot Inn. Show starts at 8 PM.

Fifty percent of the proceeds of the benefit will be donated to the
Save Kenneth Foster Campaign . The State of
Texas intends to execute
Kenneth Foster on August 30, despite the fact that he did not murder
anyone. Unlike any other state in this country, Texas utilizes a unique
statute called the Law of Parties which allows the State to subject a
person to death even though he did not kill, intend to kill, help or
encourage anyone to do so.

The other fifty percent of the proceeds will be used for the 8th Annual
March to Stop Executions in Houston on October 27.

Several Austin performers will participate, including the Austin
Chronicle's winner of 2006 BEST NEW BAND, the Texas Sapphires. There will
also be clowns, dancers, and various other performances.

The show's sponsors have donated various products and services which will
be raffled to attendees. Diablo Rojo, The Boiling Pot, Antone's Records
and Epoch Coffee will be donating gift certificates.

EastSide Pies will also donate pizza for attendees.

Bands and Performers:
-----------------------------
www.thetexassapphires.com
www.invincibleczars.com
www.myspace.com/diasporic
www.laurascarborough.com
www.dampheat.com

Sponsors:
--------------
www.diablo-rojo.com
www.theboilingpot.ypguides.net
www.eastsidepies.com
www.epochcoffee.com
www.antonesrecordshop.homestead.com
www.motorblade.com

CONTACT:
Crystal Caviel, Projects Director
512.945.1020
email: Gunstreetgirl@riseup.net
www.texasmoratorium.org

Mario Africa at the Rally!

2007-07-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

One of the true stars of the Austin rally was Mario Africa of MOVE. Here is his inspiring speech:

Video Coverage of the Rally

2007-07-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

Below are videos of several of the inspiring speeches from the July 21 rally for Kenneth!!!

UT Professor Dana Cloud

Exonnerated death row inmate Shujaa Graham

Rodrick Reed, brother of innocent Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed

And finally, some closing remarks from Kenneth's daughter Nydesha

Solidarity from Illinois!!!

2007-07-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

DRIVE received the following message of support for Kenneth Foster. It is from Mark Clements, a torture victim of Chicago police chief John Burge. At the age of 16, Mark signed a false confession after being beaten, threatened, and having had his genitals squeezed. He was denied access to anyone, including his mother, during interrogation. No physical evidence connects him to the crime for which he was convicted.

Mark is still in prison after 26 years. He is now 42 years old and still fighting his unjust 4 life-sentences plus a 30-year conviction.

Mark's statement:

STOP KILLIN IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE

Poor people all across this country have greatly suffered injustices administered by the criminal justice system, but no other race more than African Americans.

The state of Texas has executed the mentally ill, innocent men and my innocent beautiful sister Francis Newton. Now the state of Texas plans to execute Kenneth Foster, Jr. - why? Because he drove a friend — Mauriceo Brown in his car. As Mr. Foster was parked, listening to loud music, Mr. Brown eases out of the car and shoots a man eighty feet away. Mr. Brown admits he committed the shooting without Mr. Foster’s knowledge. Let me emphasize, Mr. Foster’s car windows were rolled up as he listened to loud music.

This is a prime example of how the death penalty is abused and misused in this country by prosecutors, judges, and even political elected officials. The shooter took responsibility for his behavior, he admitted he only committed this crime, not Mr. Foster. The state of Texas executed Mauriceo Brown, in July 2006. This should have put an end to this case.

All too often, innocent men sit behind prison walls for decades before the courts, or Governor correct what should have been done at the direct appeal level. There is compelling evidence to support that Mr. Foster is totally innocent. This is one case of many to suggest how unfairly the death penalty is imposed upon poor people. Had Mr. Foster been white or rich in Texas, I believe he would not be sitting on death row for this crime, and it is doubtful he would have been prosecuted.

It is time, beyond time, that the death penalty be abolished in this country. Governor of Texas Rick Perry, I strongly urge you to spare the life of Mr. Kenneth Foster. Readers of this article, I request that you email your local television and radio news agencies asking them to do stories on this case. With your support Mr. Foster can gain back what was stolen from him, his freedom. This innocent man may die on August 30th, 2007 if you don’t act now.

Mark Clements
#N23123
Pontiac Correctional Center
PO Box 99
Pontiac, IL 61764

Statements of support for DRIVE from fellow prisoners can be found at the DRIVE website under the tab "In Solidarity"

Post-Rally News Coverage

2007-07-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

Here are links to some excellent coverage of the highly successful rally we had on July 21 in Austin!

The Daily Texan

News 8

KXAN

We can also expect a lengthy editorial from the Austin-American Statesmen. Keith Hampton has personally conducted three media interviews since the rally took place on Saturday!!! Clearly, we made a statement and people are listening!!!!

Also, here is a link of Kenneth conducting an interview for the Pacifica station in Houston.

Reminder: Rally for Kenneth Foster is TODAY!!!!

2007-07-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

EMERGENCY!
The State of Texas intends to execute Kenneth Foster on August 30, despite the fact that he did not murder anyone. Unlike any other state in this country, Texas utilizes a unique statute called the Law of Parties which allows the State to subject a person to death even though he did not kill, intend to kill, help or encourage anyone to do so.

RALLY AND MARCH IN AUSTIN
Saturday, July 21, 5:00 PM
Texas State Capitol, south steps

On July 21, join Kenneth's family, friends, and supporters for a march and rally with speakers, live music, and food to demand that Texas does not go through with the execution.

Speakers and Performers include:

Tasha Foster - Wife of Kenneth Foster and Hip Hop Performer
Nydesha Foster - Daughter of Kenneth Foster
Shujaa Graham - Exonerated Death Row Inmate
Welfare Poets - Politically Conscious Music from NY
Mario Africa - With the MOVE organization, Activist from Philadelphia
Darby Tillis - Exonerated Death Row Prisoner & Blues Musician from Chicago

Plus many more!

More info about Kenneth's situation:
http://www.freekenneth.com

Texas Moratorium Network Benefit for Kenneth Foster!!!

2007-07-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

Our friends at TMN have been so moved and impressed by the hard work around Kenenth's case, that they have agreed to contribute half of the proceeds from their upcoming benefit to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign! The success of this event depends on attendance, so please plan to be there!

WHO: Texas Moratorium Network
WHAT: "It Came From Austin!!!!" - A Benefit for Texas Moratorium Network and
the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign
WHEN: Saturday July 28, 2007 - 8:00 PM
WHERE: The Scoot Inn, 1308 E. 4th, Austin TX 78702
www.eastinns.com
ADMISSION: $5-$10 sliding scale, 21+

TEXAS MORATORIUM NETWORK PRESENTS
"IT CAME FROM AUSTIN", A LIVE MUSIC/PERFORMANCE BENEFIT
SHOWCASE TO RAISE AWARENESS OF TEXAS DEATH
PENALTY ISSUES.

AUSTIN, TX - The Texas Moratorium Network
<http://www.texasmoratorium.org>(TMN) is organizing a benefit
show to help raise awareness of current death penalty issues in Texas,
raise money to fight the death penalty and gain new members. The benefit
is July 28 in Austin at the Scoot Inn. Show starts at 8 PM.

Fifty percent of the proceeds of the benefit will be donated to the
Save Kenneth Foster Campaign <http://www.freekenneth.com/>. The State of
Texas intends to execute
Kenneth Foster on August 30, despite the fact that he did not murder
anyone. Unlike any other state in this country, Texas utilizes a unique
statute called the Law of Parties which allows the State to subject a
person to death even though he did not kill, intend to kill, help or
encourage anyone to do so.

The other fifty percent of the proceeds will be used for the 8th Annual
March to Stop Executions in Houston on October 27.

Several Austin performers will participate, including the Austin
Chronicle's winner of 2006 BEST NEW BAND, the Texas Sapphires. There will
also be clowns, dancers, and various other performances.

The show's sponsors have donated various products and services which will
be raffled to attendees. Diablo Rojo, The Boiling Pot, Antone's Records
and Epoch Coffee will be donating gift certificates.

EastSide Pies will also donate pizza for attendees.

Bands and Performers:
-----------------------------
www.thetexassapphires.com
www.invincibleczars.com
www.myspace.com/diasporic
www.laurascarborough.com
www.dampheat.com

Sponsors:
--------------
www.diablo-rojo.com
www.theboilingpot.ypguides.net
www.eastsidepies.com
www.epochcoffee.com
www.antonesrecordshop.homestead.com
www.motorblade.com

CONTACT:
Crystal Caviel, Projects Director
512.945.1020
email: Gunstreetgirl@riseup.net
www.texasmoratorium.org

Petition Drop at the Court of Criminal Appeals Tomorrow!!!!

2007-07-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Come join Nydesha Foster, Lawrence Foster, Kenneth Foster, Sr., and Lloyd Foster as they deliver petition signatures to the Court of Criminal Appeals demanding a new trial for Kenneth!!!!

MEDIA ALERT/PHOTO OPPORTUNITY Contact: Bryan McCann

July 19, 2007 (309)-310-5223

On Death Row for Driving a Car: Family of Kenneth Foster, Jr.

to Deliver Petitions to Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

WHAT: Family members of Kenneth Foster, Jr. will deliver several hundred petition signatures to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asking them to grant him a new trial. Foster has received an execution date of August 30, and his criminal attorney, Keith Hampton, has filed a final write of habeas corpus detailing new testimony that claims Foster had no role in the 1996 shooting death of Michael LaHood, Jr. Sentenced to death in 1997, Foster was driving the car carrying Mauriceo Brown the night he killed LaHood. Texas’ Law of Parties makes it possible for the state to charge men like Foster as if they committed crimes they were present during.

WHO: Members of Foster’s family will include Nydesha Foster (his 10 year-old daughter), Lawrence Foster (his grandfather), Kenneth Foster, Sr. (his father), and Lloyd Foster (his uncle). Nydesha Foster will deliver brief remarks and all will answer questions before the petition delivery takes place.

WHEN: Friday, July 20, 2007 at 3:00 pm.

WHERE: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals at the Supreme Court Building, 201 West 14^th, Room 106, Austin, Texas 78701.

WHY: Kenneth Foster, Jr. has been on Texas’ death row since 1997 for the shooting death of Michael LaHood, Jr. Foster did not shoot the gun that ended LaHood’s life, but was driving the car carrying the actual triggerman, Mauriceo Brown. Foster was convicted and sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, which allows the state to seek convictions for those present at the scene of a crime as if they committed it. Since Foster’s original trial, the other men in the car that night have testified that Foster had no idea LaHood would be shot. Since Foster received his August 30 execution date, a coalition of family, friends, and other supporters have organized to save his life. This petition delivery supports Foster’s final writ of habeas corpus, which his attorney Keith Hampton submitted last month.

The Save Kenneth Foster Coalition was established on May 30, 2007 to organize a campaign to halt the execution of Kenneth Foster, Jr. It meets weekly in Austin, Texas. Online: http://www.savekenneth.blogspot.com. More information on the Kenneth Foster case is available at http://www.savekenneth.com.

Kenneth in the Daily Texan!!!!!

2007-07-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Viewpoint: Stop Kenneth Foster's execution

Posted: 7/19/07

When they said the truth would set you free, that didn't mean these doors would pop open and you'd walk out. You better start to recognize this thing called the soul. Although to me this is just a small part of this reality. Believe me; I've got more. Start to look through the fabrications and distorted truths. Truth is like light; you must be accustomed to it gradually. Otherwise, it dazzles you. There are no new truths in what I speak, only truths that have not yet been recognized.

- Kenneth Foster
# 999232

On Monday, Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles granted an execution reprieve for 38-year-old Troy Davis about 24 hours before the state was set to kill him. Davis, who's been on death row in Georgia for 17 years, was convicted of shooting and killing an off-duty police officer in 1989, but has maintained his innocence throughout the appeals process. Davis pointed to the fact that seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses recanted their testimony after the trial, even saying they were pressured by police to testify against him. No physical evidence linked Davis to the crime, and the murder weapon was never found.

Since the nighttime murder happened so quickly, and the eyewitness testimony was so untrustworthy, the real story of Officer Mark MacPhail's death may never come to light.

But in the case of Austin-born Kenneth Foster, a death row inmate much closer to home, the state of Texas did not need to find a murder weapon, or a motive, to sentence him to death. All it needed was the Law of Parties.

Foster's Case

On August 15, 1996, Foster, then a 19-year-old starting his own record label, spent an afternoon driving three friends around a San Antonio neighborhood. One of them, Mauriceo Brown, had a gun, and he and another passenger exited the car and robbed two people at gunpoint, despite Foster's misgivings. That night, thinking Foster had been following her, a woman flagged his car down. The men talked to her, and then she walked toward her boyfriend, Michael LaHood Jr. Brown exited the car and got into an argument with LaHood. He then shot and killed LaHood in self-defense, he said.

Eighty feet away, Foster heard the gunshot and began to drive away, but his other friends convinced him to wait for Brown, according to testimonies. Brown then re-entered Foster's car, and they left the scene, only to be apprehended later that night.

Foster was tried alongside Brown for the murder of LaHood, thanks to the Law of Parties. He was sentenced to death in 1997, and his execution date is set for Aug. 30, a mere six weeks away.

The Law of Parties

Texas adopted the Law of Parties in 1974, which states, in part, that:

"A person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators; [then] all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it, [or] if the offense was committed in furtherance of the unlawful purpose and was one that should have been anticipated as a result of the carrying out of the conspiracy."

Prosecutors argued that Foster, because of his complicity in the previous robberies, conspired to rob LaHood and was thus responsible for his murder. However, according to the testimonies of all four men, Foster had no idea that the shooter, Brown, grabbed the gun from beside the front passenger seat when he exited the car. Moreover, none of the men agreed to rob LaHood at all. The Law of Parties was thus misapplied to Foster. Because Brown and Foster were tried together, the jury was only instructed to determine if Foster was associated with Brown and if he should have anticipated Brown's actions.

In 2005, U.S. District Judge Royal Fergeson announced that the misapplication of the Law of Parties violated Foster's Eighth and 14th Amendment rights and overturned his death sentence. However, a federal circuit court overruled that decision, so aside from his final writ of habeas corpus, Foster's appeals have run out. Unless his execution is halted yet again, Kenneth Foster will die because he "should have anticipated" that Mauriceo Brown would surreptitiously grab a gun, argue with a stranger, shoot that person and re-enter the vehicle.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

Following the Oklahoma City bombing, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was signed into law by a president running for re-election, and it severely cut down on the ability of death row inmates to appeal their sentences to federal courts. The act reduced the statute of limitations for convicts to file federal writs of habeas corpus to six months after their state appeals ran out, effectively sealing off the possibility of extensive investigation or inquiry into misconduct by lawyers and law enforcement. The AEDPA also weakens the ability for federal courts to hear state cases: For instance, a district court must issue a "certificate of appealability" for a federal judge to hear the case. In essence, the state judges have to assert their colleagues' ineptitude to assure a federal appeal for a prisoner.

Additionally, the law defers to state courts in determining the factual bases of appeals and prohibits the defense from introducing new evidence that wasn't presented in the original trial, unless it wasn't reasonably discoverable earlier or was somehow suppressed. Foster's court-appointed lawyer never told the jury that Foster attempted to drive away after hearing the gunshot, but it could not be inserted into Foster's subsequent appeals.

The AEDPA was envisioned as a way to eliminate "groundless," "meritless" and "hopeless" appeals to federal courts. The coarse, context-lacking language in the law notwithstanding, the act has amplified the courts' ability to tie their own hands, cover their eyes and streamline the denial of justice to many who have legitimate grievances against the criminal justice system. Because the AEDPA leaves more decisions up to states, results for prisoners are uneven and haphazard, depending on the judicial temperament of their home state, district or presiding judge.

A system problem

Most importantly, the difficulty of presenting new evidence in appeals highlights the economic disparity in death penalty defense. Court-appointed defense lawyers are often overworked and underpaid - and a number of them are under-qualified and overmatched in the courtroom, especially against district attorneys armed with the full force of the state behind them. Almost all death penalty defendants cannot afford their own representation, and this is no accident: Prosecutors will recommend the death penalty for defendants whose attorneys are ill-equipped to fight it. For working people like Foster, the deck is stacked against them even before the bailiff proclaims, "All rise."

Appeals lawyers are often no better - Texas only gives public defenders $25,000 to investigate and write habeas corpus writs. At $100 an hour, a low pay rate for most lawyers, this amounts to about six weeks of full-time work on each case. A 2005 Austin American-Statesman investigation reported that many appeals lawyers provide "incomplete, incomprehensible or improperly argued" work, and only after this investigation did the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agree to set minimum standards of professionalism for negligent habeas corpus lawyers.

This does not discount the hard work of many court-appointed defenders, however. Many who care deeply about upholding justice for all work beyond the $25,000 stipend, hire investigators out of their own pockets and provide zealous defenses for their clients. It is not as if these women and men are few and far between, it is that institutional barriers block public defenders from providing this service on a universal basis.

Foster's DRIVE

Foster is more than just a factually innocent man on death row. A sociology major at San Antonio's St. Philip's College in 1995, Foster continues to study subjects such as sociology, theology and philosophy while in confinement. His poetry is can be read on the Internet, and a book of his poems, titled "Tribulation's Eyes," is available in German, Italian and French on the overseas underground market. He's also a brother, a husband, and a father to a little girl named Nydesha.

Foster is an activist within prison walls. In 2005, he and four other inmates formed the Death Row Inner-Communalist Vanguard Engagement (DRIVE), a group that performs nonviolent protests against the Polunsky Unit's living conditions. Inmates occupy recreational rooms to protest everything from force-feeding to a lack of proper medical care. When they resist, they are stripped naked, tear-gassed and beaten into submission. Each beating, by law, is videotaped, and copies are available to the public by request through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

DRIVE also indicts the entire criminal justice system, highlighting the class and race disparities in prison populations and the institutional roadblocks to adequate legal representation. Foster protests not only because he is not a murderer, but because he wishes to fundamentally change the inhumane conditions experienced by every inmate pushed through the system.

Kenneth Foster does not deserve to die for his nonexistent role in the shooting death of Michael LaHood Jr. He held no weapon and plotted no conspiracy. Even the sweeping language of the Law of Parties was misapplied in Foster's case. He deserves a new trial, one that brings to light his grievances against the Law of Parties as well as the criminal justice system in general. If anything, he was a reluctant accessory to two armed robberies. But the time to argue the wisdom of driving around friends while they commit robberies is during Foster's new trial. The time to save his life is now.

For more information about Kenneth Foster, visit www.freekenneth.com. For more information about the DRIVE movement, visit http://drivemovement.org

Excellent Article About Kenneth in The Brooklyn Rail!!!

2007-07-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/7/express/kenneth-foster-and-the-texas-death-house

Kenneth Foster and the Texas Death House
by Liliana Segura
Kenneth Foster

Kenneth Foster’s time is running out.

After ten years on death row, the state of Texas is gearing up to kill him on August 30 for a murder he didn’t commit. Foster was convicted for the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood Jr., who was shot following a string of robberies, by a man named Mauriceo Brown. Brown admitted to the shooting and was executed by lethal injection last year. Now Foster faces the same fate. So, if Brown was the shooter, what did the 19-year-old Foster do to get a death sentence? He sat in his car, 80 feet away, unaware that a murder was taking place.

Foster was convicted under Texas’s “law of parties,” a twist on a felony murder statute that enables a jury to convict a defendant who was not the primary actor in a crime. This can mean sentencing someone to death even if he or she had no proven role in a murder. Texas’s law states that “if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it.” Defendants, the Texas courts say, can be held responsible for “failing to anticipate” that the “conspiracy”—in Foster’s case, the robberies, for which he was the getaway driver—would lead to a murder. Foster’s sentence, death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal recently commented, “criminalizes presence, not actions.”

In theory, the law of parties is “a well-recognized legal document,” says Houston defense attorney Clifford Gunter, and most states with the death penalty on the books include a similar provision for “non-triggermen.” Nevertheless, critics of the Texas law say it’s an aberration—a slippery legal statute that stands in direct violation of the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Enmund v. Florida. Still the “prevailing view,” according to Gunter, Enmund held that the death penalty was unconstitutional for a defendant “who aids and abets a felony in the course of which a murder is committed by others but who does not himself kill, attempt to kill, or intend that a killing take place or that lethal force will be employed.” In Texas today, the law or parties says exactly the opposite.

Even more troubling is the law in practice. When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.

One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green’s appellate lawyer, Verna Langham—who also handled Kenneth Foster’s first appeal—sees as the danger of the law of parties. “[It] is subject to such loose interpretation,” she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. “A kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death.” Green was executed in 1999.

No formal study has been done on the number of defendants subjected to the law of parties in Texas. Anti-death penalty activists estimate that Texas death row has 80 to 100. This number seems high to David Dow, founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and author of Executed on a Technicality (2005). But he says that it could be an accurate measure of the number of prisoners whose juries were given the choice of applying the law of parties, even if their conviction did not hinge on it. “In a lot of cases, you have a [law of parties] instruction, but jurors have to find one or the other: Either the person was responsible for killing the victim or they are responsible for participating in a crime where it should have been anticipated that a murder would take place.” For a defendant facing lethal injection, it’s a distinction without a difference. Regardless of the number of times the law of parties has been used, its clear effect has been to broaden the pool of defendants eligible for death. By inviting a jury to speculate whether a defendant “should have known” a murder could happen, it drastically lowers the burden of proof for a punishment supposedly reserved for “the worst of the worst.”

From the zeal of prosecutors to the legal machinery that supports them, “the structure of the Texas’s legal system makes it easier to sentence people to death,” says Dow. Between the Polunsky Unit in Livingston and the women’s death row in Gatesville, nearly 400 prisoners are awaiting execution. By the end of the summer, Texas will have killed its 400th prisoner since the death penalty was brought back. The state that famously carried out 152 executions under Governor George W. Bush has seen Gov. Rick Perry surpass his record. Since taking office in December 2000, Perry has signed off on over 158 executions—a number that will be dated when this piece goes to press (and which would be higher still were it not for the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which forced Perry to commute the death sentences of 28 prisoners who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime). In this context, it’s hard not to see the law of parties as an irresistible tool in a legal system designed to summarily execute people. Especially if the defendant is black and the victim is white.

Kenneth Foster’s case is a good example. He’s not just a black man accused of killing a white man; he was convicted for killing the son of an attorney highly esteemed by the legal community. As with so many other cases involving families of influence, the media was all over it, and the LaHood family’s wish for an execution quickly became public knowledge. (LaHood’s mother reaffirmed her support of Mauriceo Brown’s execution last year.) In other particularly high-profile cases, the law of parties has come in similarly handy for the prosecution. In the trial of Patrick Murphy Jr.—one of the notorious “Texas Seven,” who in 2000 escaped from prison, killed a police officer on Christmas Eve, and were summarily sentenced to die—prosecutors seeking death sentences across the board used the law of parties to circumvent the fact that Murphy was not at the scene of the crime. Prospective jurors were asked not just how they felt about capital punishment, but also about the law of parties specifically. (It worked. Murphy is now sitting on death row.)

The many excesses of Texas capital law offer a portrait of a brutal and broken system—one that has long been protested by anti-death penalty activists. More recently, prisoners themselves have begun to organize from the inside. Kenneth Foster is among them. In 2005 he helped found D.R.I.V.E, a group of death row prisoners who protest the death penalty as well the abusive conditions of their incarceration. D.R.I.V.E, which stands for “Death Row Inner-Communalist Vanguard Engagement,” is multi-racial, highly political, and, perhaps most important, thriving—on one of the most repressive death rows in the country. Members encourage fellow prisoners to protest on execution days, and to protest their own executions (refusing to walk to the van that takes them to the executions chamber; refusing last meals). They also protest inhumane prison conditions. Last fall, a dozen death row prisoners at Polunsky went on a hunger strike to protest the inedible food and constantly overflowing toilets in their cells, among other abuses. Comparing themselves to the hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, they eventually caught the attention of the New York Times.

Some members of the group also invoke the legacy of Gary Graham—a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa—the Texas death row prisoner who was executed in 2000, despite overwhelming evidence that he could be innocent. Graham, who was put to death amidst widespread protests, maintained his innocence until the end, declaring in his last statement, “They are murdering me tonight.” This era, which Dow considers the “heyday” of protest around executions, coincided with increased repression on Texas death row. Following an attempted prison break in the late 90s, the death row population was relocated. At their new home in the Polunsky Unit, prisoners are housed for 23 hours a day in cells that are 60 square feet (the American Correctional Association recommends a minimum of 80 feet). Work and recreation privileges are pretty much non-existent, and the few prisoners entitled to small luxuries can easily have them taken away. Such is the case of Stephen Moody, whose participation in last fall’s hunger strike led to the confiscation of his radio. Texas death row prisoners are allowed no contact visits, and only a few phone calls a year.

Despite this, Kenneth Foster and D.R.I.V.E. have allies on the outside. In addition to his supporters and family in Texas, a New York-based political hip-hop group called the Welfare Poets is speaking out on behalf of Foster and other prisoners on Texas death row; grassroots groups like the Campaign to End the Death Penalty are working to protest Foster’s execution, from Harlem to Austin. With Foster’s legal recourses almost dried up, a letter campaign to members of the appeal board is underway. But it’s a long shot. “Perry has never granted clemency in a capital case before, even when the Board recommended it,” says Bryan McCann, a CEDP activist in Austin. In a state that will have executed 400 people by September, clemency has only been granted two times. “If Kenneth Foster has a good innocence claim, that would be great for him,” Dow says, noting that innocence is what gets attention these days. But while Foster’s supporters argue that Foster is innocent—that nobody should be executed “for driving a car,” in the slaughterhouse state of Texas, innocence can be harder to prove than guilt.

About the Author

Save Kenneth Foster Campaign Meeting Tomorrow!!!

2007-07-17T14:41:00.001-07:00

This week's meeting is being held at the Cepeda Library at 651 N. Pleasant Valley Rd. in Austin. It begins at 7pm.

See you there!!!!!

Rally for Kenneth This Saturday!!!!

2007-07-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Foster Segment on Pacifica Radio in NYC!!!!

2007-07-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Pacifica affiliate in NYC ran a story about Kenneth's case!!!! They interviewed Ray Ramirez from Welfare Poets and Lawrence Foster (Kenneth's grandfather). This station has wide circulation, so this is great news! Check it out!!!!!

New Time for Kenneth Foster Rally

2007-07-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Please note that the previous post has been edited to reflect the new time for our rally. It will begin at 5pm on July 21, not 6pm.

Official Rally Announcement

2007-07-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

The State of Texas intends to execute Kenneth Foster on August 30,
despite the fact that he did not murder anyone. Unlike any other state in this
country, Texas utilizes a unique statute called the Law of Parties
which allows the State to subject a person to death even though he did not kill, intend to kill, help or encourage anyone to do so.

RALLY AND MARCH IN AUSTIN
Saturday, July 21, 5:00 PM
Texas State Capitol, south steps

On July 21, join Kenneth's friends, family and supporters for a march
and rally with speakers, live music, and food to demand that Texas does not
gothrough with the execution.

More info: cedpaustin@gmail.com

More info about Kenneth¹s situation: http://www.freekenneth.com

*********************
Facing execution for driving a car

THE STATE of Texas plans to execute Kenneth Foster Jr. August 30 for
the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood Jr.

What makes Foster's case unique is that he killed no one--and the state of
Texas is first to admit this.

How is this possible? Texas' Law of Parties, adopted in 1974, allows
prosecutors to hold all those present legally responsible for a crime.
Because Foster was driving the car carrying Mauriceo Brown the night Brown
shot LaHood, prosecutors were able to try Kenneth as if he was the
shooter.

Brown, who was executed in July 2006, admitted to shooting LaHood, but
claimed it was in self-defense. He also insisted that Foster, who remained
in a car 80 feet away from the shooting with the radio on and windows
rolled up, didn't know he had left the car with the gun.

In addition to being railroaded onto death row by the Law of Parties,
Kenneth is a founding member of the Death Row Inner-Communalist Vanguard
Engagement (DRIVE), a group of brave death row inmates who organize
protests for abolition and better living conditions on Texas' death row.

As Kenneth says, "We are neither violent nor passive. We are combative. We
are resisters. We are diverse activists, but more than anything else, may
we be looked upon as men who embraced the sacredness of life and sought to
assert the full measure of their humanity in the face of those that would
seek to destroy it."

Last week, Kenneth's criminal lawyer, Keith Hampton, submitted a new
appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. If the court refuses to
grant Kenneth relief, his supporters will then turn to the Board of
Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry for clemency.

After Kenneth's execution date was announced in May, a broad coalition
called the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign was formed. The Austin and Corpus
Christi chapters of Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP), along with
Kenneth's family and lawyers, as well as other anti-death penalty groups,
have been holding weekly meetings to build a movement around this case.

The coalition held a petition and literature table at Austin's Juneteenth
festival on June 19. This annual commemoration of emancipation from
slavery provided an excellent opportunity to reach out to the community.
The coalition got over 200 signatures on the petition to the Court of
Criminal Appeals.

Texas is on track to perform its 400th execution since 1982 this summer.
The case of Kenneth Foster Jr.--a Black man sent to death row for driving
a car--is a testament to how rotten Texas's machinery of death truly is.

What you can do

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty will hold a July 20 phone/fax blast to Gov.
Rick Perry's office. Call 800-252-9600 (Texas callers) or 512-463-1782
(Austin and out of state), and send faxes to 512-463-1849.

A rally is planned for July 21 at 6pm at the state capital building in Austin.

For more information on Kenneth's case and the struggle of Texas death row
prisoners against executions and rotten conditions, see the Free Kenneth
Foster and DRIVE Movement Web sites.

You can also write Kenneth to voice your support:

Kenneth Foster Jr.
#999232
Polunsky Unit
3872 FM 350 South
Livingston, TX 77351

Kenneth's Case in the Austin Chronicle

2007-07-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

Jordan Smith, who first covered Kenneth's case in 2005, authored a new article about it in the most recent Austin Chronicle.

Donate to the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign!!!

2007-07-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

We now have a savings account set up for donations for our July 21 rally, getting high profile people here for the rally, and subsequent work after the rally. Any and all funds that are not used after all is said and done will go to a trust or an account that is set up for Kenneth's daughter, Nydesha.

Send donations to:

Velocity Credit Union
PO BOX 1089
Austin, Texas 78767-9947

Acct. Name : To Save Kenneth Foster
Acct #: 831766.1

Learn More About Kenneth's Case

2007-07-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

Check out the Free Kenneth website for more information on his case and the Law of Parties.

Important Documents to Help Save Kenneth!!!

2007-07-02T00:27:00.000-07:00

Below are links to several documents you can use to help us as we continue organizing to save Kenneth Foster, Jr.! Correspondence related to the delivery of signed petitions and letters should be directed to Bryan McCann at bmccann@mail.utexas.edu.

Kenneth Foster Petition

Kenneth Foster Clemency Letter

Kenneth Foster Fact Sheet

Welcome!

2007-06-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

This blog is designed to spread information about the case of Kenneth Foster, Jr. and the struggle to save his life. Please check regularly for updates!