George Bush issues verdict over Betty Lou Beets case

[Celso Alvarez Caccamo]

Hello. Please excuse the cross-posting.

I read in a Spanish newspaper the following account of the
execution in Texas of 62-year old Betty Lou Beets, and of
governor George Bush's decision not to pardon her. Mine are
translations from Spanish, so I would appreciate corrections
to the governor's exact words:

<<Before deciding over the pardon, Bush explained: "The question
I am going to ask myself is, Is she guilty of murder?". He
gave the answer in a communiquee: "After reviewing the evidence
for the case, I agree with the jury that Betty Lou Beets is
guilty of this murder".>>

Unquote.

Bush decided not to pardon Beets, and she was executed
by lethal injection after having a nice meal. She agonized for
several minutes. She died amidst religious prayers by a priest.

If the newspaper's account is accurate, it is extremely troubling
to see that a governor's decision to pardon or not someone in
death row can depend on his or her own interpretation
of 'the evidence', not on political ideology or on higher-level
humanitarian reasons. George Bush has supplanted the role of
a popular jury, by placing personal 'agreement' or 'disagreement'
with the jury's verdict over political considerations. This
supplantation is clearer if we envision that Bush had instead
'disagreed' with the jury and, in consequence, he would have
had to pardon Betty Lou Beets.

I understand pardon in capital punishment cases does not
question a jury's verdict, or the pertinence of a judge's
sentence in view of a verdict. Simply, clemency by a high
representative of the people consists on sparing someone's
life. The clemency decision itself expresses either distrust
in a judicial process which glorifies revenge,
or the evident fact that killing someone who killed is not
necessary for achieving justice. If either, public interpretation
of pardon is to be avoided as potentially undermining of the
foundations of Law, ideological coherence would dictate
that a governor would only need to reason like this: 'No pardon.
It's the Law'.

But that was not Bush's argument. Does this decision by Bush
represent a discursive turn in how the State (the US, in this
case) justifies a most barbaric act which is the
quintaessential expression of its power? Are people in general
or intellectual elites in the US reflecting on how this appropriation
by Bush of a jury's decision evidences the totalitarian ideology
of someone who might become the federal president of the USA? This
totalitarianism contains a typical feature of populist dictators
(as was Peron in Argentina, as is Chavez in Venezuela): since
they come 'from the people,' and they are 'like the people',
they are, in essence, The People themselves. Therefore, a leader's
personal decision is inherently fair and democratically unfailable.

In Beets' case, George Bush IS the popular jury in its entirety.
This is perhaps slightly different from Bill Clinton's stance
on the issue, when he legitimizes his support of death penalty by
claiming that (apparently) "the majority of the US people"
also do so.

I would like to know how much has been discussed or written
about the discourse of death penalty, one of the most strategic
domains to understand peoples', political leaders' and intellectual
elites' respective positionings about the functions and goals of
the state, and one where the citizen's condition of subject of
the state machinery emerges with its most cruel face.

Thank you,

--
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo              Tel. +34 981 167000 ext. 1888
Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Filologia     FAX +34 981 167151
Universidade da Corunha                          lxalvarz at udc.es
15071 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)  http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/