Reviewing Texas's recent record on capital clemency

The Houston Chronicle has this new article on capital clemency in Texas, which is headlined "Perry uses clemency sparingly on death row; Governor has never called off an execution on a claim of innocence." Here are some notable snippets:

In nearly nine years as Texas governor, Rick Perry has never spared a life based on a claim of innocence and only once delayed an execution in such a case, according to a Chronicle review of public records, clemency statistics and information from the governor's office.

During that same period, officials in other death penalty states granted clemency for humanitarian reasons at least 200 times — 171 based on questions of innocence in Illinois alone.

Texas has executed 200 convicts under Perry's watch, but he has spared just one condemned man's life in a case in which he was not compelled to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.  In that case, the inmate Perry saved in 2007 was not a killer but the admitted driver of a getaway car, condemned alongside the triggerman in a joint trial under Texas' tough “law of parties.”...

Clemency — the use of executive power to reduce, forgive or delay a sentence — is considered the last fail-safe in the death penalty review process nationwide.  Yet in Texas, it is almost never granted.  In fact, at least 50 of the past 200 executions were carried out without any clemency board review at all, a Chronicle analysis of state execution and parole board statistics shows.  Other death row inmates' final pleas for mercy were rejected for arriving after the board's deadline....

In Texas, alone among the states that use parole boards for execution cases, the board never meets to review applications from the condemned. Instead, its members vote via fax. Efforts to reform the process have been unsuccessful....

Paddy Burwell, a retired Exxon geophysicist who served on the parole board from 1999-2005, recalled several troubling death row reviews when he said he received subtle pressure from other members to vote against clemency. “I don't think they care whether a person is guilty or not guilty,” Burwell said.