An Innocent Man?
Or A Lowlife Degenerate
By Daniel Muniz

The state of Texas has a Law of Parties statute which makes a third-party culpable for murder even if he or she wasn’t part of the actual killing. Although hug-a-thug activists despise this law, most states already have similar statutes on the books such as California’s Joint Responsibility Rule of Conspiracy.

In one controversial case, Associated Press writer Michael Graczyk wrote the following excerpt about a Texas condemned, Kenneth Foster, whose sentence was commuted hours before his execution:

Foster and a companion, Mauriceo Brown, were tried for the Aug. 15, 1996, shooting of Michael LaHood on the driveway of LaHood's home in San Antonio. Foster insisted he was 80 feet away in a car, had no idea Brown was going to kill LaHood and didn't participate in the shooting.

A Bexar County jury convicted Foster and Brown of capital murder and sentenced both to death. Brown was executed last year.

Source: The Associated Press

The rest of Graczyk’s article “Texas inmate spared hours before death” described the trauma and the relief Kenneth Foster experienced escaping the death penalty and his steely resolve to some day be set free. It was a very positive story about one man’s struggle against the system.

But there are some crucial details that this AP writer conveniently omitted.

First, Kenneth Foster was more than just a hapless companion of Mauriceo Brown. Both men were vicious gang bangers with long rap sheets. In fact, Foster was already on probation for shooting two people.

Graczyk also fails to mention what Foster and Brown were doing prior to the murder of Michael LaHood. In his article, the AP writer merely regurgitates Foster’s mantra that he didn’t know that Brown was going to murder this high school teacher who was moonlighting as a cab driver.

Were they cruising around town looking for girls or did they need to pick up a gallon of milk?

Absolutely not because Brown had already committed two robberies earlier that night in which he split the money with Foster but Graczyk neglects to include that minor detail in his story.

So what about that bogus assertion that Foster didn’t know what Brown was going to do to LaHood?

Well that is interesting. Since both of them are gang bangers (Graczyk conveniently neglects to mention the criminal past of both men), just what are the possible outcomes when a thug steps out of a car with a gun in his hand and a bandana over his face demanding money from a total stranger? And did Foster have absolutely no clue of what could have happened even though his buddies just previous robbed other people?

The biggest problem with the death penalty opponents is that they turn violent hoodlums into saints who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They don’t necessarily lie but they strategically omit all the violent attributes of the offense and only emphasize the positive elements that never existed.

So in other words, they want to make it look like the wrong man is being executed.

But why do death penalty opponents go to such pains to gloss over the facts in order to reinvent the image of a condemned man? Why can’t they simply oppose the death penalty and let people pass judgment on it? After all, if it is such a bad thing, people will see it for what it is?

The problem with the honest approach is that nearly all of the criminals on death row are dirt bags. The public doesn’t have much sympathy for violent thugs so they don’t mind at all if they get executed. Poll after poll shows that it is very difficult to persuade the public to spare a lowlife degenerate from the execution chamber.

As a result, the only chance death penalty opponents really have is to be completely duplicitous about the hoodlum and disingenuous about the crime itself. The result is that there are millions of people who have been duped into actually believing that Kenneth Foster is not a vicious criminal and that he should be set free.

Consequently, some of the death penalty opponents even end up believing their own falsehoods. In essence, they become hug-a-thug activists because they feel that almost everybody in prison has been wronged by society and that they should be freed. And AP writer Michael Graczyk helped facilitate this belief by omitting the important facts that clearly show that Kenneth Foster is a scumbag.

If activists abhor the death penalty, that is fine and they should protest it on its merits but the moment they fraudulently depict a violent thug as an innocent man, they lose the credibility of their cause.

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