Testing Phobia: Texas Set to Execute Another Innocent Man

March 22, 2010

The bloody-minded, death-obsessed state of Texas, which has already
demonstrably executed at least one innocent man, Cameron Todd
Willingham (who was falsely accused and ultimately killed by the
state for the alleged arson "murder" of his two little children when
in fact they'd died because of a fire caused by an electrical fault),
may be about to execute yet another innocent man.

This time it's Hank Skinner, 47, a man who has spent 16 years on the
state's busy death row protesting his innocence in the 1993 New
Year's Eve murder of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons,
aged 20 and 22.

The thing about Skinner's case is it would be relatively easy to
prove whether or not he was really the killer of the three. There are
two bloody knives that have never been tested for Skinner's DNA--or
for the DNA of Twila's uncle, the man who had reportedly made several
unwanted sexual advances at her earlier that evening, leading her to
leave a party early, and who Skinner claims is the real killer. Nor
was semen that was found on Twila Busby, who was raped, or skin found
under her fingernails, ever DNA tested to see who they belonged to.

There were, to be sure, plenty of circumstantial reasons at the time
to suspect Skinner. It is undisputed that he had been drunk and
passed out on the couch in Busby's house shortly before the murders,
which occurred in the same room he was in. The drunken Skinner also
staggered from the home in Pampa, TX, his hands bloodied, following
the killings. But Skinner maintains that he had cut his hand, falling
off the couch, and that the blood was his own. He says he had woken
up to find Busby and her sons already dead.

Incredibly, police investigators at the crime scene never took
fingernail clippings from Busby, nor did they take a vaginal swab at
the scene, though she had clearly struggled and had apparently been
raped.

Skinner's court-appointed trial attorney could and clearly should
have sought that DNA testing before or even during his trial, but
didn't bother to do so--no surprise, given the low quality of public
defender representation provided in Texas, especially at that time.
(Incredibly, that defense attorney, Harold Comer, was the same person
who, as a district attorney, had earlier had prosecuted Skinner for
two minor crimes--assault and car theft! Comer had lost his
prosecutor's post when he pleaded guilty to mishandling cash seized
in drug cases his office had handled.)

But Skinner's current appellate lawyer, Rob Owen, a University of
Texas law professor, says that's no reason not to do those tests
today, to settle the matter once and for all--before Skinner is
executed.

So far, inexplicably, the state of Texas has blocked his efforts to
have the testing done. And time is growing very short. Skinner's
execution is set for Wednesday, March 24. He and attorney Owen have
asked the US Supreme Court to block the execution and to order
testing. As Owen told the Los Angeles Times, "In any investigation
today, all of this evidence would have been tested for DNA. But why
not do the testing now?"

On March 19, six men who had spent a collective 67 years on death
rows for crimes they were later able to prove they did not commit
gathered to call on Texas to do the right thing, and allow time for
DNA testing of the evidence in Skinner's case.

Curtis McCarty, who himself spent 21 years on Oklahoma's death row
waiting to die, only to finally get DNA testing of evidence that
finally proved his innocence, says, "When evidence is available to be
tested, it is criminal and unconstitutional not to test it."

The gratuitously cruel attitude of the state of Texas, where the
court of appeals rejected Skinner's request for DNA testing, and
where Gov. Rick Perry has been unwilling to intervene, has been
clearly illustrated in its treatment of Skinner's wife, Sandrine
Ageorges-Skinner, who has been barred for nearly 22 months from
visiting her husband on death row, on the technicality that she is a
foreigner (she is a French national).

Skinner came within a week of execution in February, when a state
judge delayed the date for a month to allow his appeal to the US
Supreme Court.

To take action on this outrageous case, and call on Gov. Perry to
grant Skinner's reasonable request to have the evidence in his case
DNA tested, go to:

http://www.change.org/innocence_project/actions/view/
order_dna_testing_for_hank