Statement By Laurence H. Tribe

October 12, 2000

"In order to meet the charge of Vice President Gore that he had been "soft" on hate crime, Governor Bush pointed to the three men convicted of the racist murder of James Byrd Jr. and insisted that his opposition to the special hate crimes legislation championed in Byrd's memory by surviving relatives was being misunderstood inasmuch as Texas already gives the maximum punishment to murder as a crime of hate. The Governor assured America on nationwide television that Texas would avenge Byrd's gruesome slaying by putting to death all three men who had been found responsible for his murder.

"Apart from the awkward fact that one of the three men has actually been sentenced to life in prison rather than to death, the Governor's statement is a truly shocking one for any executive official to make during the pendency of appeals from criminal convictions. No judge or jury who will have heard the Governor say these men are going to die for their crime can be certain that this official commitment from the highest level of state government will not affect the process of judgment. In these circumstances, it is clear that any result meted out to the three convicted men will be rendered vulnerable to possible state and federal challenges on the ground that the bottom line was foreordained. For a state's chief law enforcement officer to jeopardize the state's appellate and clemency processes, not to mention the possibility of a fair retrial if some error in any of the convictions were to require further proceedings, displays a stunning disregard not only for the integrity of the legal process but also for its ability successfully to bring men like these to justice.

"For no apparent reason more compelling than to score points in a presidential debate, the Governor of Texas has seriously endangered the ability of his state to vindicate the rule of law in one of the most horrendous slayings in the nation's history. Even if the Governor were to apologize and to take back his words, some bells simply cannot be unrung. This, I fear, may well be one of them.