Texas Lawyer’s Death Row Record a Concern. You don’t have to be legally well-versed to recognize the incompetence of the Texas attorney portrayed here. He believes he’s had more clients sentenced to death than any attorney in the US and the jurisdiction in which he practices has the third-highest number of executions in the country; he boasts that he failed criminal law in law school; he’s been reprimanded multiple times for professional misconduct; it appears he conducts professional business with the smell of alcohol detectable on his breath; and listen to how he handled the defense of Gary Graham, scheduled for execution in Texas on June 22. It is contended that he assumed throughout his defense that his client was guilty. “There’s nothing I could have done that would have changed the result,” he said. Sounds true enough; as his new attorneys handling his appeal point out, this is a textbook case of how poor representation sends poor people to death row throughout the nation.

The Nation‘s Deathrow Rollcall site keeps a running tally of the year’s executions by state, and has a calendar of upcoming executions. You can click on an inmate’s name to send an email to the governor of her/his state requesting a stay of execution for the inmate and a moratorium on executions on the whole. The source of The Nation‘s information is Rick Halperin’s Death Penalty News & Updates.