Chapter Eleven: Was It Really His Fault? 

During the 2000 Presidential campaign, as national and international attention was drawn to severe problems within the Texas capital punishment system, candidate Bush’s spokespersons began to distance him from the Texas death penalty.  They asserted that the high execution rate in Texas during his tenure was merely the result of an inherited backlog of capital cases. 

But evidence suggests that Gov. Bush was actively involved in exacerbating the system.  His 1994 gubernatorial campaign promoted accelerating Texas executions, and one of the first bills Gov. Bush signed did in fact accelerate executions by limiting and expediting appeals.  Although Texas lacks any life without parole sentencing option, Gov. Bush argued against adding that option to state law since it might “weaken the death penalty.”  Attempts to make the Board of Pardons and Paroles an open, transparent body were resisted.  A law to prohibit executions of the mentally retarded was stifled.  A law to provide indigent defendants with competent legal counsel, passed unanimously by both houses of the Texas legislature, was vetoed.  And calls for a moratorium on executions, providing time to study and improve the Texas capital punishment system were dismissed.