Death by misadventure: the death penalty in America

Vincent and Rafaela Sanchez were an elderly couple living in Chicago. Some time in 1986 they were brutally stabbed to death in the ‘safety’ of their own home, apparently the motive was robbery. This was a horrible crime – preying on the weak, taking human life for nothing and condemning every elderly person in the area and beyond to constant fear and vigilance. The man convicted of the murder, local gang member Aaron Patterson, was sentenced to death.

Just those facts make it simple – many will breathe a sigh of relief. Further details, however, are unsettling. Patterson was accused of the crime by a female relative who was also a suspect in the murder. She has since retracted her statements. The only other evidence against Patterson, a black man, was a confession. It was typed by the police but unsigned. The confession was obtained by John Burge of the Chicago PD, a man fired from the police force after investigations established that he had interrogated at least 40 black men using torture: electric shocks, beatings, Russian roulette, suffocation, burns and threats of death. 10 men who ‘confessed’ after interrogation by Burge are now on death row in Illinois. Patterson himself was interrogated for 25 hours during which he was beaten, kicked, threatened and suffocated. Despite this treatment he refused to sign the confession. There was no other evidence against him – no fingerprints, no murder weapon, no eye-witnesses, no recovered stolen items. There was physical evidence – footprints and fingerprints were recovered from the scene – they just did not match Patterson. The physical evidence has since been ‘lost’ by the police. Despite the lack of any physical or circumstantial evidence against him Patterson was found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury , sentenced to death and has not succeeded in any appeal to date.

For a man on death row Aaron Patterson is a lucky man. Lucky for two reasons. The first reason is that he is imprisoned in Illinois, a state that has recently imposed a death penalty moratorium. Governor Ryan of Illinois, a strong death penalty supporter, imposed the temporary ban on executions as he was troubled by the exoneration (proved actual innocence) of 13 men on death row in Illinois since it was reintroduced to the state in 1977. The number of exonerated men in Illinois is actually more than those who have been executed there since 1977: 12. Illinois has what you might call a bit of an "innocence problem".

The second, related, reason why Patterson is lucky is that he is the most recent cause celebre of the Northwestern University journalism department. It was journalism students at Northwestern who were instrumental in achieving the moratorium after they proved the innocence of a convicted death row inmate, Anthony Porter, for a school assignment. Porter had been convicted by a jury, exhausted all 3 tiers of appeal, unsuccessfully appealed for clemency to the Illinois Governor and came within 2 days of execution. In a matter of weeks the young journalism students not only punched holes in the reliability of evidence against Anthony Porter (evidence described on appeal as "overwhelming") they found the actual murderer and obtained from him a videotaped confession!

Since the Illinois decision 6 more states have introduced bills for a moratorium on the death penalty until they too can iron out their own ‘innocence problems’. The Nebraska legislature passed their bill but it was vetoed by the Governor. Fortunately, according to Presidential hopeful George ‘Dubya’ Bush Jr, Texas, the nations biggest killer, has never made a mistake. The state executes more people than many states combined but not (according to Dubya) innocent ones.

In fact, actual innocence is just the biggest and most troubling of problems plaguing the United States’ criminal justice system (known as ‘the machinery of death’). Even if one believes in the death penalty, and 75% of Americans do, there is strong evidence that the truly guilty who receive the death penalty are not necessarily the ones most people would consider to ‘deserve it’. It is common knowledge that most death row inmates are black. It is less well known that a number of death row inmates are not sadistic killers but battered women who kill their abusive husbands. Supporters of the death penalty, especially women, might also be troubled to know rape of itself (in some cases including knife wounds and ‘mild mutilation’) can never be grounds for receiving the death penalty in the US as the Supreme Court finds the crime insufficiently "serious". But convenience store robbers who cause death when they discharge a gun after they trip over, or when the gun is grabbed in a struggle, are usually "death eligible" (in fact this scenario is said to account for a majority of death row inmates in some states – violent men who kill their wives are a considerably lower proportion).

Do death penalty advocates really feel that Sandra Lockett, a woman who waited outside while her boyfriend accidentally shot a pawn store owner when the owner grabbed the gun during a robbery, forfeited her right to life? What about Monty Eddings, a 16 year old boy with a mental age of 13 who shot a police officer escaping his violently abusive step father because he was terrified of being returned home? They were both sentenced to death but escaped the electric chair 5-4 in the US Supreme Court. It is unlikely they would escape today.

How has the system in the US, to many the greatest nation on earth, gone so horribly wrong? If death row inmates are not deserving of death why would American people support the death penalty? How can there be an innocence problem? There are so many checks and balances: a defendant must be charged by police, a prosecutor must decide to seek the death penalty, the defendant has a lawyer, the jury must decide beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty and decide that they deserve death. Most cases have at least 8 different appeals and the defendant can always appeal for clemency from the Governor. How can 85 people, that’s right 85, go through this entire process and turn out to be irrefutably innocent?

A brief examination of the major stages players in the US criminal justice system exposes so many horrendous flaws that it creates reasonable doubt in my mind that any death row inmate is actually guilty or merits death.

Getting to trial: Police and Investigating Personnel

If we are honest with ourselves the presumption of innocence is a bit of a joke. Most jurors would be like me and think "well what is he doing here if he didn't do anything? The police wouldn't have arrested him". This thought would be especially strong if the defendant is some big black guy looking cranky in a bright orange uniform shackled to an armed guard. This perception endures even though everyone in the US knows the names Rodney King, Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo: black men who were respectively violently beaten; tortured and sodomized; and shot 41 times by police for the crime of just being black. We also know how confessions were produced by John Burge in Chicago. But the true level of police misconduct and incompetence is so striking is much more widespread that even cynics might expect. A FBI laboratory test established that DNA evidence eliminated about 25% of people that police identified as their prime suspects. What would have happened to these 5, 000 people before DNA testing? Traditional detection approaches such as eye-witness reports, identity parades and even confessions have been found notoriously unreliable, but juries are highly reliant on them Police and prosecutors will swear by their methods even after uncontroverted scientific evidence shows their suspect is innocent.

DNA and other scientific evidence has proved a powerful tool for exoneration in the US but it has also been a weapon against the innocent. In one scandal in West Virginia it was discovered a forensic investigator had completely faked all his lab results for a ten year period (that is 170 murder and rape convictions)! In mistake-free Texas the forensic pathologist Ralph Erdmann routinely falsified autopsy reports to give evidence prosecutors wanted in death penalty cases, his lab conduct included mixing up autopsy victim’s heads. Erdmann eventually ended up in prison but not on death row where some still reside as a result of his testimony. Other labs are manned by inexperienced or incompetent personnel who use standards way below the acceptable minimum – one bad chemist in San Francisco ruined 1000 drug convictions, how many dodgy scientists have not been exposed? But to juries scientific evidence is laden with credibility and scientific experts are incredibly difficult to contradict. James ‘Dr Death’ Grigson, also a Texan, gave expert psychiatric opinions leading to 115 death sentence from 134 cases. Grigson testified that Randall Adams had a sociopath personality disorder and assured a jury that he would definitely "kill again". Adams (immortalized in the movie The Thin Blue Line) came within 72 hours of execution, but was proved innocent of any crime.

Then there is police misconduct – framing and coercing - which occurred in 31 of the 67 cases where innocent people were exonerated after conviction by DNA evidence, a number of the Illinois cases and regularly in the controversy ridden Rampart division in LA (where a police officer shot an unarmed suspect then successfully had the paralyzed man convicted for his ‘attempted murder’). Finger-print planting scandals have emerged in two counties in California. In upstate New York the practice of state troopers was exposed when one bragged about planting finger prints in an FBI interview.

Even when police are not outright corrupt they still employ questionable strategies like the frequent use of the ‘jail house snitch’, prisoners who claim to have heard confessions by cell-mates and who testify in return for reduced jail time. The problem is that many snitches are pathological liars who rifle through court papers to pretend they know intimate details of the crime which they then claim to have heard during a confession. 46 convictions in Illinois are being reviewed because of the use of pathologically lying snitches, some whom now admit to fabricating a number of confessions for reduced time. In California one snitch has also admitted to inventing dozens of confessions.

An event in my hometown has made me realize how vulnerable we all are to wrongful prosecution and even death. A murdered grad student was found near my home. A Professor, her academic advisor, who also lives in my neighborhood, has been named chief suspect by police and has been suspended by the University. There is no real evidence against this man, physical or circumstantial. There had been tension about a paper she had been writing and she complained about him to friends, as have I about my academic advisors who supervise my papers. He lived near where her body was found, as do I and my academic advisor and almost all the university faculty. This man’s life has been ruined by police in my town (police who have also charged 3 people in succession for another murder – all unsuccessfully) for doing nothing but his job. He is begging for a trial to clear his name, I hope the jury pays more heed to the presumption of innocence that most do.

The Fair Trial: Prosecutors

Prosecutors, who are usually elected, have vast discretion to decide whether or not to request the death penalty or plead out the case (accept a guilty plea for a lesser sentence). The inclination to seek the death penalty varies from prosecutor to prosecutor in different regions. So in New York city prosecutors have all but ruled out ever seeking the death penalty. In some counties in Texas the prosecutor will seek the death penalty on every single homicide. The variation is so dramatic that in once case a defendant committed a crime in a parking lot that was on the border of two counties – the prosecutor of one county always sought death, the other almost never. The hearing to determine where in the parking lot the crime was committed, to decide which county would prosecute, became an issue of life and death.

How is the decision to seek death or not reached? Prosecutors say they weigh the seriousness of the offense, the criminal history of the defendant and the wishes of the family. Statistics reveal that it is a far simpler equation – if the victim is white and the defendant is black the death penalty is much more likely to be sought. In fact in Alabama, where a prosecutor claimed he was guided by families wishes it was discovered that no family of a black victim had ever been consulted – not one. The black families discovered their cases had been plead out when news of the plea was broadcast on television. But then prosecutors are not always the most black-friendly bunch. In a case just this year a prosecutor commented that a defendants claim of mental deficiency was not a valid medical complaint but just "niggeritis". The comment attracted no media attention in the land where it is often claimed political correctness has "gone too far".

Atrocious prosecutorial conduct goes beyond racial slurs. In Illinois ten percent of death penalty conviction have been reversed and sent for retrial because prosecutors withheld evidence showing innocence or knowingly told false information. Nationwide 381 homicide convictions have been overturned due to prosecutors lying or concealing exculpatory evidence. Some prosecutors, like Robert Macy in Oklahoma, will get reprimanded up to ten times a year by judges for misconduct but use the publicity to boast their ‘tough on crime’ election platform. Johnny Holmes in Texas has sought death more than any other prosecutor. But you will be hard pressed to find a judge who has criticized Johnny Holmes in the mistake-free state, they wouldn’t dare, he is known to make calls to George Dubya Bush and have judges removed if he doesn’t like their decisions or attitude.

Having a prosecutor against the death penalty doesn't guarantee that it will not be sought if you make the mistake of shooting a white person (always bet on black). In Washington DC and in the Bronx hundreds of black people get murdered every year but the Prosecutors there are against invoking the death penalty. But the shooting of two white people in a fancy suburb of Washington and the shooting of a white police officer in the

Bronx prompted the Governor of New York and the Justice Department respectively to override the recommendations of the prosecutors and demand the death penalty.

Defense lawyers

Anyone on earth (and martians with television reception) know the line "you have the right to remain silent…you have the right to an attorney, if you can not afford a lawyer one will be appointed for you by the court". In fact defendants in felony cases were routinely denied counsel by state courts until 1963 when the US Supreme Court boldly found the term "right to counsel" in the US Constitution meant just that, at least for felonies. But no one ever said you had a right to good counsel or as the US Supreme Court puts it "there is no right to a meaningful attorney-client relationship". In appeal cases there is no right to an attorney at all. You may be blind, deaf, illiterate, schizophrenic or too mentally retarded to understand court procedure, but it doesn't matter, you are required to file your appeals in the correct form and to make the appeal dates or you lose any right to appeal on any grounds, including actual innocence.

Everyone knows if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Public defender funding has been slashed and the federal resource centers that used help them have been abolished by Bill Clinton. Volunteer resource centers still exist but they battle death threats, bomb scares and abuse. Under paid and over worked, public defenders rarely have time to prepare cases, discuss strategy or examine evidence and witnesses. Forget about the team of lawyers, DNA experts, investigators and psychiatrists that wealthy people like OJ Simpson can afford (and the Prosecution can afford with the resources of the state). In fact it is not unknown for attorneys to still be reading the defendant' file at trial. Counties without public defenders might tender out all legal defense work to an attorney who offers the lowest bid or use the judge (or even the local sheriff) to appoint counsel. Court appointed attorneys get paid at about a tenth of the normal fee for a capital case. They will have two things in common – a lackluster practice which allows them to loiter at the courthouse looking for clients (a number will get a death eligible defendant for their first ever trial) and a determination to keep on side with the appointing judge to ensure they get as many appointments as possible.

The quality of a lawyer is incredibly significant as any appeal based on the conduct of the trail – such as how the jury was selected, what lawyers or witnesses said to the jury, how spectators behaved in the courtroom – must be objected to at the time to be a valid appeal ground. If the lawyer doesn’t object because he or she is not listening or doesn’t realize an important issue (or is asleep or drunk) – tough, no appeal. The same goes for appeal deadlines. If your lawyer misses deadline by a day or an hour– bad luck, off to the gas chamber. Now there is supposed to be an appeal ground of ineffective counsel (only at trial). But in reality counsel for capital crimes can be as bad as humanly possible without being deemed "legally ineffective".

Lawyers have slept through trials or turned up day after day drunk as a skunk - one lawyer shared a cell with his client when he was arrested for his drunken behavior during trial, the client got sentenced to death. Think the Simpson’s Lionel Hutz is a fictional character? An attorney in Kentucky listed his work address as "Kelly’ Keg", the local bar, and arrived at trial both very late and very drunk. This conduct, and the bags of stolen property found in his home, were not enough to overturn his client’s conviction. In Texas 75 year old Joe Cannon has more former clients on death row that almost any attorney. Cannon boasts of going through trials like greased lightning and not bothering with time wasting issues like library research, taking notes, interviewing witnesses or cross-examination. He defends his practice of sleeping through trials as "an afternoon nap" for an old man. Cannon has never been held ineffective, even when he managed to convince a jury his client had a more serious role in the crime than the one he was charged with or forgot to mention a relevant defense (thus barring future lawyers from ever mentioning the issue in appeal). That client is now dead. At least he didn’t call his own client "nigger" like a number of Texas attorneys. Or, like a couple of Texas defenders, refuse to present volunteered family testimony. In those cases (including one involving a battered woman) appeals failed even after jurors admitted that they never would have invoked the death sentence if they had heard the testimony. One of my favorite stories is about two appointed lawyers found that their client had left his last job without collecting his pay check. This was strong evidence of mental incompetence - everyone picks up their pay check unless something is serious wrong. Did the lawyers present the check as mitigating evidence? No they cashed it and spent it!

These aren’t isolated examples. In 33 death penalty cases in Illinois defendants had lawyers that were later disbarred for misconduct, or in one case a lawyer who had finished suspension 10 days before. A quarter of the exonerated death row inmates had lawyers that were later disbarred for misconduct Other bar associations have decided to cease disciplining lawyers for misconduct during criminal trials. Unsurprisingly defendants with court appointed counsel get convicted and get sentenced to death at a far higher rate than those with private lawyer. Middle and upper class people do commit capital crime but you won’t find too many on death row.

Juries

To sit as a juror in a capital case jurors need to be "death qualified". What this means is that if a juror expresses doubts or reservations about the death penalty they might be struck from the jury on the basis that their feelings might "substantially impair their ability to be impartial". But jurors are almost never struck for being too enthusiastic about the death penalty. A juror who vehemently asserts that all homicides deserve death will be asked if they can "set their feelings aside" and "consider" the option of life without parole. If they reply "well sure, I’ll consider it" – they are "death qualified".

Most states have a bifurcated system. This means jurors first decide if the defendant is guilty or innocent (the guilt phase) and then they hear evidence to decide if they will sentence to death or grant life without parole. The same jurors decide both phases and the vast majority of jury selection focuses on the question " ‘if’ the defendant is convicted what penalty is deserved?" It is not surprising that studies have shown that this system leads to a presumption of guilt in the mind of the juror by the time trial begins. Death qualified jurors convict at a much higher rate than other juries. Jurors who try to resist convicting, or imposing death, often report later that their fellow jurors told them they had promised the prosecutor during jury selection that they would impose the death penalty ("hold-out jurors" also report general bullying, intimidation and harassment, especially women and african-american jurors).

So who can sit on a jury? Lawyers can’t, police officers can. In cases upheld on appeal jurors have been friends or colleagues with the victim’s mother, in one case a juror attended the victim’s funeral. For many years in Texas (the mistake-free state) blacks were automatically struck by prosecutors from jury pools according to official policy. The Supreme Court now prohibits this. If you can establish that jurors are being struck on racial grounds the prosecutor must provide a ‘race-neutral’ explanation for their conduct. Establishing racial prejudice is hard unless every single black potential juror is challenged, for example if all black jurors are struck except two police officers who enthusiastically support the death penalty, the case may not be made out. If you can convince a judge of racial bias the prosecutor must merely explain. Acceptable race-neutral explanations have included "the juror had a beard" "the juror was divorced" "the juror looked dumb" "the juror went to x college" (a predominantly black university) and "the juror is a mason" (the juror was a brick mason). As a result of this stringent standard many black defendants will have their fate decided by all white jurors (for example in 35 death penalty sentences in Illinois).

What is the significance of black defendant having an all-white jury? A study of DNA exonerations reveals that black men are considerably more likely to be wrongfully convicted than whites, especially when they have all-white juries. As a general rule of psychology people are far less likely to convict or sentence to death someone they identify with and they attach more credibility to witness evidence from 'their peers'. This may explain the story of Calvin Johnson - a man exonerated of serial rape convictions by DNA evidence. Johnson was tried for two rapes - one by an all white jury, one by a jury of mixed race. His main defense was an alibi - 3 black witnesses (one of which, his father, was also a lawyer) who testified that he was with them at the time of the crimes. Eyewitnesses had also described a clean-shaven assailant but Johnson had a beard. Johnson was acquitted by the mixed race jury but convicted by the all-white jury.

Judges

So what are the judges thinking? They are thinking of their next election, unlike Australia American state judges are elected to the bench. In a number of states judges will not just promise the standard "tough on crime" platform but actually say "vote for me, I sentenced 80 people to death". In one television advertisement I have seen here the announcer proudly tells us Judge Smith "looked the defendant in the eye and sentenced him to death without blinking" (who said justice needed to be blind?). Appeal judges will also campaign, sometimes solely, on the basis of how many death convictions they have affirmed – not their fairness, impartiality, wisdom – how many people they agreed to execute. Recently a sitting appeals judge wrote an open letter to support the efforts of a former clerk to become elected to the bench saying "he helped me on all the 39 death penalty convictions which I affirmed". If judges refuse to affirm convictions, even if bound by Supreme Court precedent, they can be hounded out of office. This occurred to a female judge in (you guessed it) Texas.

Most judges campaign for office with the support of the local DA (prosecutor). Imagine being a capital defendant and discovering the prosecutor and judge are the two you saw photographed arm in arm in a glossy campaign leaflet trumpeting the number of death sentences the judge has given. Perhaps because of the need for prosecutorial support in elections a lot of judges are former prosecutors (two thirds of criminal judges in Texas are former prosecutors). The prosecution mindset often follows them to a bench. In Cook County (where seven of Illinois’ innocents were sentenced to death) a judge and former prosecutor once asked "what could DNA evidence possible prove?" In one Alabama case a DA prosecuted a case, ran for the bench on a campaign that boasted achieving a death sentence on the case and then presided over the same defendant’s appeal! She refused a defense motion to recuse herself and denied there was any potential for bias.

Appeals: US Supreme Court

A number of Supreme Court decisions have been mentioned already. I limit discussion to two. In Jacobs v Scott a Texan man was convicted of executing a kidnapping victim. He was sentenced to death. A few years later the same prosecutors tried his sister for the same crime. They said that the sister had acted alone, that she was the sole person who fired the gun, that the allegation that Mr Jacobs fired the gun was mistaken and that his confession was false to protect his sister. The sister was convicted. Mr Jacobs then appealed to the Supreme Court saying essentially "you can’t convict us of the same crime if only one person did it". His attempt to get a hearing was denied by the Supreme Court and he was executed.

Case 2, Herrera. Mr Herrera was convicted of a crime on the basis of some reasonably shaky identification evidence. He asked the Supreme Court to review his death sentence on the basis of actual innocence – a signed confession from his brother, and a corroborating affidavit from a witness. Herrera never really got his day in court as the Surpeme Court found that actual innocence was not a ground for review, as Justice Scalia put it: "there is no basis in text, tradition or even traditional practice (if that were enough) for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction". A major factor in the decision was the courts reluctance to review all the cases that might be brought up, the Chief Justice stated: "few rulings would be more disruptive of our federal system that to provide for federal habeas review of free-standing claims of actual innocence". They preferred to keep the original "fair trial" as the "main event". The court did leave open the possibility of entertaining a "truly persuasive claim of innocence" but felt the standard would have to be "extraordinarily high". A couple of affidavits (even a signed confession) was "way below" that standard. The court recommended innocent people approach governors for clemency.

Clemency: State Governors

The Supreme Court regularly justifies its failure to overturn convictions, even appeals of actual innocence, because of the existence of a ‘fail-safe’: executive clemency. There was a time when a plea for executive clemency or mercy was a meaningful exercise and around 25% of clemency pleas were upheld by state Governors who commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment. Now Governors campaign to seem ‘tough on crime’, George Bush Jr boasts his execution numbers for his run for President. Bush, the compassionate conservative, says "no" to battered women but "yes" to serial killers. Seriously, a man who has succeeded in a clemency appeal to George Jr is a serial killer, Henry Lucas. He had killed a number of people but had actually wrongfully confessed to the one he was going to be executed for. George thought it would be poor form to kill a man who was actually innocent of that particular crime. But I wouldn’t put my money on Henry Lucas lasting the Presidential campaign.

Other clemency grants are completely random. In Missouri a personal visit from the Pope to the Governor lead to a murderer of 3 people receiving a commuted sentence. The man due to die the following week, for a less serious crime, missed out. Jaturun Siripongs was also unlucky, he had an appeal for mercy from the wife of one of the victims, a personal plea from the Cardinal of LA and some evidence of actual innocence. But he was the first scheduled execution of a new Governor of California, Gray Davis. Allowing clemency on your first execution is bad politics in California. Gary Siripongs is now dead and Gray Davis is still the Governor. Not that clemency grants means freedom, in one state a man with a strong claim of innocence was granted clemency – life without parole.

The Federal Executive and Legislation: President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton set the tone for his Presidency when he flew into Arkansas to personally deny clemency and ensure the execution of Ricky Ray Rector. Rector had shot himself after murdering a man and a police officer. His life was saved but he sustained brain damage and part of his frontal lobe was removed, akin to a lobotomy. Despite being mentally retarded it was found that he was not too retarded to be executed, ie he knew that he was being executed and why. It emerged after the execution that Rector had left the dessert portion of his last meal, he had told guards he wanted to save it for later.

Clinton helped enact the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Law Enforcement Act (a cunning title as any opponents would seem ‘pro-terrorism’). The Act greatly restricts the ability of any defendant to receive post-conviction review. For example any evidence of innocence must not have been discoverable at trial, a defendant would be barred from appeal if the evidence was available but an incompetent lawyer did not discover it. The Act provides so many bars and time limits that had it been enacted earlier 75 of the 85 exonerated people from death row would still be executed today. The mind boggles at what George Bush Jr will enact if he is elected to office.

Conclusion: The final player - The American Public

I have already mentioned that at least 75% of the public support the death penalty. In a recent opinion poll 91% of American people agreed that innocent people have and will continue to die under a death penalty regime. 75% of those surveyed also believe that people who are sentenced to die but who are "actually innocent" should have an opportunity to prove their innocence. Hmm might like to have a word to the remaining 25% there. On reflection I probably wouldn’t. If a bill of rights was introduced today it probably would be laughed out of Congress as ‘UN dictated soft on crime nonsense’. The first 10 amendments are regularly dismissed today as "meaningless technicalities" – except the right to bear arms of course.

But then what can the public do, what should they do? They have made it clear the death penalty is here to stay. Well there are two ways they can go really. One is support moratoriums and carefully examine death row cases to ensure that innocent people are not dying at the hands of the state. The other way to go is to support a Presidential candidate running on his record that his state kills more defendants than any other, does not fund public defense and refuses to support moratoriums as he claims that Texas has never made a mistake. Time will tell.