A broad spec­trum of the pub­lic is seek­ing clemen­cy for Texas death row inmate James Allridge, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on Thursday, August 26th. Among those point­ing to Allridge’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion as the basis for mer­cy are four of the orig­i­nal jurors in his tri­al, two for­mer death row prison guards, a retired prison sys­tem admin­is­tra­tor, a Fort Worth city coun­cil­man, one of Allridge’s for­mer employ­ers, and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. The sup­port­ers state that since Aldridge arrived on death row in 1987, his remorse for the mur­der of Brian Clendennen has led him to strive for redemp­tion, and his behav­ior has become a mod­el for oth­ers on death row.

Former death row guards point­ed out that Allridge has made the unit a safer place and that he has used his intel­lec­tu­al skills to teach oth­ers in prison to read and write. Allridge has also become an accom­plished painter whose art has been dis­played through­out the nation and inter­na­tion­al­ly.

Jurors in the case said that they were not pre­sent­ed with impor­tant mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence dur­ing his tri­al and that this infor­ma­tion could have led to a sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion of life in prison. The jurors say that defense attor­neys failed to ade­quate­ly present evi­dence about Allridge’s trou­bled rela­tion­ship with his fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly his naive desire to please an old­er broth­er who was a career crim­i­nal. This omis­sion kept jurors from accu­rate­ly eval­u­at­ing Allridge’s future dan­ger­ous­ness, a deter­mi­na­tion that Texas uses as the pri­ma­ry basis for a rec­om­men­da­tion of death.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has received over 120 requests for clemen­cy in cap­i­tal cas­es and has rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy to the Governor on only few occa­sions. Of the three clemen­cy rec­om­men­da­tions sent this year to Governor Rick Perry, he has grant­ed only one, and that was on the basis of the defen­dan­t’s men­tal retar­da­tion.

Critics of the Texas death penal­ty sys­tem state that it’s iron­ic that the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem per­mits juries to rec­om­mend death based on a future dan­ger­ous­ness deter­mi­na­tion gleaned from ​“every bad thing you’ve ever done,” but fails to take into account the acts of redemp­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion dur­ing the clemen­cy process. They point to the words of Charles Aycock, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the State Bar Association and a mem­ber of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, who has stat­ed, ​“Clemency is not about a rigid legal stan­dard — or even a legal stan­dard capa­ble of artic­u­la­tion. Rather, it is about mer­cy.” The Board of Pardons and Paroles will con­sid­er Allridge’s clemen­cy request on Monday, August 23rd. (Austin Chronicle, August 20, 2004) (UPDATE: Allridge was exe­cut­ed by the state of Texas on August 26, 2004.) See Clemency.

Tags
Citation Guide