Bush--Rush to Judgment

"The death penalty's very serious business, Leo," Governor Bush condescendingly told a questioner in the third presidential debate. "There've been some tough cases come across my desk. Some of the hardest moments since I've been governor of the State of Texas is to deal with those cases.... But my job is to ask two questions, sir. Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, looking at you right now, in all cases those answers were affirmative."

On camera Leo Anderson, the questioner, didn't seem to buy the governor's oft-repeated assertion, and he certainly wouldn't have if he had been privy to a recently released confidential memorandum on one of the toughest of those cases.

The memo went from Bush's then-general counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to Bush at 10:30 on the morning of April 3, 1997, only hours before David Wayne Spence was to be executed. Although the document was his first detailed look at the case and although the governor was Spence's only hope for a reprieve--the courts and Board of Pardons and Paroles having turned him down--this "very serious business" took Bush, according to his schedule for the day, all of half an hour at most.

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