I forwarded this yesterday but accidentally put in a web address,
therefore it didn't get posted to Chomsky List.    I'm reposting it ,
because it directly bears on the assertions made by a subscriber here
that there are no innocent people getting the death penalty in the US.

I might also want to mention another type of death penalty that US
'justice' has been administering.      But found  - NOT IN THE US NEWS-
Mexican Immigration authorities state that 214 Mexican minors have lost
their lives while crossing the US Border in the first 5 months of the
year alone.

Tony
______________________________
posted on the Marxism List by Louis Proyect

(This is from a NY Times article by Raymond Bonner and Sara Rimer, dated
June 11, that deals with the incompetence of Gary Graham's (aka Shaka
Sankofa) court-appointed lawyer. Bonner is a fiercely courageous
journalist who was removed from his post in Central America in the 1980s
by editor A.M. Rosenthal, who was responding to State Department
complaints about Bonner's alleged leftwing sympathies. One can only draw
the conclusion from reading this article that Graham has not received
competent legal defense. Moreover, those lacking his high-profile might
have already been murdered by the state already. Thus it becomes even
more urgent to lend one's voice to his defense. Appeal to Governor
George W. Bush Jr. to stop the execution. phone: 512-463-2000 or fax:
512-463-1849.)
====

On death row at the Terrell unit of the Texas state prison in
Livingston, an hour's drive north of here, inmates and death penalty
lawyers refer sardonically to a place they call the Mock Wing. This
metaphorical prison enclave has housed at least a dozen death row
inmates, some already executed, others awaiting their final punishment,
who shared the same lawyer, Ronald G. Mock.

Mr. Mock, who was appointed by Harris County judges to represent
indigent defendants in capital cases, says he believes he has had more
clients sentenced to death than any lawyer in the country. One of those
clients, Robert Anthony Carter, 34, was executed on May 31. On June 22,
another client, Gary Graham, 36, is scheduled to die by lethal injection
after a 19-year court battle.

In large part because Mr. Graham's conviction turned on a single
eyewitness who saw him only fleetingly and at night, his new lawyers are
insisting that he is innocent and are pressing for a postponement of his
execution and for a new trial. In earlier pleadings, they also raised
questions about Mr. Mock's competency as trial counsel. . .

Mr. Mock, who boasted in an interview this week that he had flunked
criminal law at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of
Law, called no witnesses during the guilt phase of Mr. Graham's trial,
which lasted two days. He did not challenge before the jury the
testimony of the single eyewitness who sealed Mr. Graham's guilty
verdict, although there were other witnesses who could have provided
conflicting testimony.

He called only two witnesses during the penalty phase, when his job was
to persuade the jury to spare his client's life. Mr. Mock, who had only
three years of legal experience when he took on Mr. Graham's defense,
acknowledged in the interview that he did almost no investigation of the
case. He knew in his gut, he said, that none of the witnesses could help
his client. Mr. Mock's investigator, Mervyn West, as well as his
co-counsel, Chester L. Thornton, both say Mr. Mock had made it clear
that he assumed Mr. Graham was guilty, an assertion Mr. Mock disputes.

Mr. Thornton said Mr. Graham's fate had haunted him for 19 years. It was
his first and last capital case. "I have serious questions whether we
presented a fair and adequate defense," he said.

Mr. Mock said that five of his clients on death row have petitions
pending in court that accuse him of ineffectiveness of counsel. The
Texas Bar Association has reprimanded him several times for professional
misconduct. "I have a permanent parking spot at the grievance
committee," Mr. Mock said.

In the 1980's, Mr. Mock, who drives a Rolls-Royce and a Harley-Davidson,
was one of the top-earning court-appointed lawyers on death cases here,
making by his estimation $120,000 to $130,000 a year. Mr. Mock said he
stopped handling capital cases 10 years ago because there was not enough
money in them. . .

With his easy manner and jokes, Mr. Mock became a favorite of a handful
of Harris County judges, some of whom were impressed by the strong
rapport he established with clients. Another reason judges appointed Mr.
Mock, Mr. Thornton and other lawyers said, was that Mr. Mock is black,
and with few African-American lawyers practicing criminal defense law in
Houston in the 1980's, judges were interested in promoting what
diversity they could.

Richard Trevathan, who was the judge in the Graham case and is now in
private practice, said, "I always thought Ron Mock was a good lawyer."

But a review of Mr. Mock's legal career here shows that he was jailed
during jury selection in one capital murder trial for failing to file
court papers in another case on time for a condemned client's appeal.

A federal judge who later reviewed the case during which Mr. Mock was
jailed wrote that his confidence in the verdict was "completely
undermined" because of Mr. Mock's performance. Mr. Mock's client,
Anthony Ray Westley, 36, was executed in 1997.

Several clients filed complaints against Mr. Mock, with one claiming
that he smelled alcohol on Mr. Mock's breath during their discussions.
Mr. Mock at one time owned 11 bars, including Buster's Drinkery, a
popular downtown hangout for judges and lawyers.

"I drank a lot of whiskey," Mr. Mock said, talking in his office in
Houston, where the walls are decorated with portraits of the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. "I drank whiskey with judges. I
drank whiskey in the best bars. But it never affected my ability. It
never affected my performance."

(clip)
Shortly after his arrest, a Harris County judge appointed Mr. Mock as
the lead lawyer in his capital case. Mr. Thornton, who knew Mr. Graham
and had represented him on some juvenile offenses, was appointed his
co-counsel.
Mr. West, a former police officer, was brought in as the investigator.

While defense investigators in capital cases routinely spend months
searching for any shred of evidence that might save their client's life,
Mr. West said in an interview this week that he wrapped up his work on
the Graham case in less than a week. "I had a couple of quick talks with
eyewitnesses and went over the police report," he said.

Mr. Mock said Mr. Graham was unable to tell him where he had been on the
night of the murder. "His position was that he was on a drug and alcohol
binge, and didn't remember where he was," Mr. Mock said. During the
trial, two witnesses went to the courtroom to tell Mr. Mock that they
wanted to testify that they were with Mr. Graham the night of the
murder. Mr. Mock said this week that he was too busy to talk to them,
but that he knew they could not have helped his client. This contradicts
an earlier affidavit, used by the state to deny Mr. Graham a new trial,
in which Mr. Mock denied knowing of these witnesses.

At least two witnesses who might have helped Mr. Graham were named in
the police report. Sherian Etuk, a child protective services worker, and
Ronald Hubbard, a postal worker, were working at the Safeway at the time
of the murder, and both said they saw the killer.

Ms. Etuk and Mr. Hubbard, whose affidavits are included in Mr. Graham's
clemency petition, both said in interviews this week that Mr. Graham was
not the man they saw. Mr. Graham is just under 5 feet, 10 inches tall.
Both Mr. Hubbard and Ms. Etuk said that the man they saw was under
5-foot-5.

Ms. Wilson, the assistant district attorney, said Ms. Etuk and Mr.
Hubbard were sincere but mistaken.

Mr. Mock said this week that he did not bother to interview the other
eyewitnesses because if he had put them on the stand, it would have
allowed the prosecution to tell the jury about Mr. Graham's other
crimes. But Ms. Wilson said that Mr. Mock was wrong about the law, that
such testimony would not have given the prosecution that opening.

No forensics evidence connected Mr. Graham to the murder, and the police
report contained ballistics evidence showing that the .22-caliber
revolver with which Mr. Graham was arrested could not have been the same
.22-caliber gun that killed Mr. Lambert.

The case came down to one eyewitness, Bernadine Skillern, a former
school secretary who has never wavered in her identification of Mr.
Graham over the years. "She was stronger than an acre of garlic," Mr.
Mock said this week, repeating an assertion he has made many times. He
did not attack Ms. Skillern's identification before the jury, and in his
closing arguments he said she deserved a standing ovation for her
bravery in testifying.

"He put on no defense," said Jack B. Zimmermann, who is working with
Richard H. Burr on Mr. Graham's case before the board of pardons and
parole. "If he didn't attack the mistaken identification, there was
nothing for the jury to do but come back with a finding of guilt."

The United States Supreme Court warned in a 1967 case against "the
vagaries of eyewitness identification," arguing that "the annals of
criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification."
Because Mr. Mock had known of the eyewitnesses and the ballistics
report, legal technicalities prevented the lawyers who followed him from
getting a hearing on that evidence.

"Gary Graham's case lies on the fault line of the Texas death penalty
system," Mr. Burr said. "He had abysmal trial counsel, who failed to
present stark evidence of his innocence based on exonerating
eyewitnesses and forensics evidence.

Thereafter, when this evidence was discovered, the courts all decided
that this evidence was presented too late to be heard."