posted 12-09-98 12:48 PM ET            

AUSTIN, Tex. (CP) -- Texans just love their 10-gallon hats, handguns, country music and college football.

They also love their executions. The state has put more condemned killers to death than any other jurisdiction in the United States: this week alone, four are scheduled to die, including Canadian Stanley Faulder on Thursday.

And that's just fine by most folks down here.

"Boy, my only problem with the death penalty's that they take so damn long to do them," says a man who introduces himself as "Buck" in a drawling twang. "They oughta just take 'em out and string 'em up."

Without tearing his gaze away from a Texas A&M football game on the big screen at one of Austin's downtown saloons, Buck dismisses the condemned criminals on death row.

"It's no more than they deserve; you take a life, you lose your life. Simple as that."

Buck's not the only Texan who feels that way. Statewide opinion polls have put support for capital punishment at over 80 per cent and Texas Gov. George W. Bush won two elections largely on his law and order platform, including staunch support for the death penalty.

Texas has executed 160 convicted killers since the United States Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty in 1976, nearly three times as many as the next-highest state, Virginia. In fact, Texas accounts for almost one-third of the 491 executions in the U.S. since '76.

That doesn't bode well for Faulder, a 61-year-old former mechanic from Jasper, Alta., who has been twice tried and convicted of murdering Inez Phillips in 1975. The 75-year-old matriarch of a prominent Texas oil family was stabbed and her skull crushed after being bound and gagged during a bungled robbery.

Faulder would be the first Canadian executed in the United States since 1952.

His lawyer argued that Faulder was denied a fair trial because the Phillips family spent an estimated $200,000 US to pay witnesses and hire private prosecutors to try the case.

The Canadian government supported the call for a review of the case based primarily on a violation of the Vienna Convention, which affords all foreigners the right to contact their national governments for legal help.

Faulder wasn't allowed to speak with Canadian consular officials until 1991.

Lawyer Sandra Babcock also argues prosecutors failed to disclose that one of their two key witnesses was also an accomplice in the robbery and that the Phillips family paid the pair for their testimony.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others have all called for Faulder to be pardoned or his sentence commuted.

So far Texas has refused to budge, but that hasn't discouraged members of a delegation of Faulder's Canadian supporters who have travelled to Texas this week to lobby the governor to stop or delay the execution.

"We are going to do whatever we can to stop this," says Rubin Carter, head of the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted. "We're going to try to appeal to the Texas people to try and slow this killing monster down."

The delegation includes Joyce Milgaard, whose son David spent years in Canadian prison for a murder he didn't commit.

They are to meet Texan government officials today to discuss Faulder's case, and Carter says they hope to see the governor himself. "We've been trying to set up a meeting with Governor Bush, but so far he's been stonewalling us."

David Atwood, president of the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, advises Faulder's supporters not to hold their breath.

He says they're up against "arrogant" officials and a public that largely embraces capital punishment as part of its Wild West culture. "Prosecutors see themselves as the Old West lawmen," Atwood says.

"It's the Old West mentality ... where they hang horse thieves and if you break the law you pay with your life."

He gives Faulder "about a 50-50 chance" of winning a stay of execution.

"I'm never overly optimistic about these cases."

But the campaign to stop Faulder's execution got a boost from an unexpected source late last week when one of the biggest and most influential newspapers in Texas wrote an editorial saying the execution should not go ahead.

"The Texas Board of Paroles and Pardons should commute Mr. Faulder's death sentence to life in prison," the Dallas Morning News wrote in an editorial.

"Agree with it or not, capital punishment is legal in Texas. However, it should not be applied erratically or cavalierly. There are just too many irregularities in this case to justify its use."

Carter says he refuses to believe most Texans want Faulder to die. "There are open-hearted, generous people in Texas," he says. "People who care about Stan and care about the injustice that is being done to him."

Faulder's sister Pat Nicholl, who lives in Jasper, Alta., says her brother is prepared to die next Thursday.

"He's been through this so many times ... this is his ninth execution date," she says. "He's stoic; he's prepared.

"When we were down last (month) for our last visit, he told us how lucky he thought he was: He says he's had a pretty good life."

Executions in Texas

Texas executions: Since the U.S. Supreme Court re-instated the death penalty in 1976, Texas has executed 161 people. That's nearly one-third of all 491 executions in the United States and almost three times the next highest state, Virginia, which has executed 59 convicted killers.

1998 executions: 17 people have been killed by lethal injection in Texas so far in 1998. Another six are scheduled for execution by the end of this year, including Canadian Joseph Stanley Faulder.

States: 38 of the 50 states have the death penalty and some federal crimes also carry the death penalty. Nine of the states with the death penalty have never used it.

Method: 34 states use lethal injection, but some allow the condemned to choose an alternate method. Ten of those allow the gas chamber as an alternative, six the electric chair, two hanging and two death by firing squad. Four states use the electric chair as their sole method of execution.

Of the executions carried out since 1976, 335 were by lethal injection, 141 by electrocution, 10 in the gas chamber, three by hanging and two by firing squad.

Botched executions:
In May 1997, Scott Carpenter had a violent reaction to the lethal chemicals flowing into his body in Oklahoma's death chamber. He had 26 convulsions, his face turned yellowish gray, then deep purple and gray before he was declared dead 11 minutes later.

In March 1997, witnesses to the execution of Pedro Medina in Florida saw foot-long blue and orange flames shooting out of the side of his head when he was electrocuted. The execution chamber was clouded with smoke and the witness room was filled with the smell of burnt flesh.

In December 1988, it took 24 minutes for Texas officials to execute Raymond Landry. Two minutes into the execution, the catheter carrying the lethal injection came out of the condemned man's arm, spraying the deadly chemicals across the room toward witnesses.

Chronology of events in the case of Stanley Faulder

July 8, 1975 -- Inez Phillips, 75, the matriarch of a wealthy Texas oil family, is beaten and stabbed to death during a botched robbery of her Gladewater, Tex. home.

1977 -- Faulder is arrested in Colorado and charged with the murder. After five days of interrogation by police -- during which Faulder says he was beaten and denied access to a lawyer -- he confesses to the killing.

October 1977 -- Faulder and former girlfriend Lynda McCann both go on trial. He is charged with murder; she is charged with conspiracy to commit burglary.

1978 -- Faulder is convicted and sentenced to death.

April 1979 -- Texas Appeals Court overturns the murder conviction, ruling that Faulder's confession had been obtained under duress.

1980 -- McCann agrees to testify as a prosecution witness in return for a $15,000 relocation payment by the Phillips family and a 10-year suspended sentence for burglary.

July 1981 -- After second trial, Faulder is again convicted and sentenced to death.

1987 -- Texas Appeals Court upholds guilty verdict, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court later upholds as well.

March 1992 -- The Canadian consulate in Dallas is informed for the first time that Faulder is in jail, on death row. Faulder is given his first execution date of Dec. 4, 1992.

1993 -- Canada files a brief in U.S. District Court supporting Faulder's appeal, citing the failure of Texas authorities to inform Faulder of his rights to contact Canadian consulate under the Vienna Convention.

1996 -- U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses Faulder's appeal, finding that the hiring of private prosecutors by the Phillips family was permissible and calling the violation of the Vienna Convention "harmless error."

June 4, 1997 -- Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy writes chairman of Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Texas Gov. George W. Bush asking for clemency on humanitarian grounds.

June 9, 1997 -- Faulder is granted a stay of execution by the Texas Criminal Appeals Court.

September 1998 -- Texas Court of Criminal Appeals lifts its stay of execution. Faulder's execution is set for Dec. 10.

Nov. 30 -- Axworthy meets with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, urging her to ask the Texas governor to stay Faulder's execution. Albright writes to Bush urging clemency for Faulder because of the violation of the international treaty.

posted 12-09-98 03:59 PM ET            

Although I agree with CapPun in some situations, I don't think that it should be used in situations with as much controversy and circumstantial evidence as this one seems to have.

It's kind of funny, but I bet most people in Texas got really out of joint when Singapore caned that US citizen a while back. I believe it was something like "he's not from Singapore, so you shouldn't cane him. We don't cane people in the US." Although, if we tried using the arguemtn "he's not from Texas, so you shouldn't kill him. We don't kill people in Canada" it would probably fall on deaf ears.

posted 12-09-98 04:30 PM ET            

Anyway. This guy did have 2 trials. He is guilty. He should have not killed a 75 year old women in Texas. They do not take kindly to that type of thing....

O yea, sure the Feds do take care of foreign problems. But the States do have some power. And one of those powers is to be able to deal with killers however they want to.

And sure CClark there is a double standard. no one likes there people to be hurt by some foreign legal system. So if they have the power to stop it, they do. Its very simple. Maybe not fair to the world, but thats how people fell about these things. Do not mess with them or there kin, and they will not mess with you.

posted 12-09-98 05:33 PM ET            

Well, to you Canadians, just consider Texas, & the rest of the south, America's Quebec

On the execution. They should go ahead & kill him. He was tried twice, found guilty both times, & therefore should be killed. He commited a crime in this country, & should be tried & executed here. Anyway, if they did give him another trial, it would be guilty again anyway.

On why I get involved in debates: I don't know, I usually seem to get flamed.....

posted 12-09-98 07:06 PM ET            

He KILLED someone, ok everyone?

It seems some have confused social justice with criminal justice. Just because someone poor killed someone rich doesn't mean he should be felt sorry for. He shouldn't be felt any more sorry for than if someone rich killed someone poor. I find casting this whole thing in terms of "let's all feel really sorry for the poor guy that stabbed this woman in the back of her skull" quite deplorable.

Now I am from Virginia, where we *also* have capital punishment. I support it myself. Why? That's a very long story. The simple answer is that it works, it removes a very dangerous element from society rather permanently. However, I believe that it should *NOT* be used in the place of doing something about the causes of crime. Such a policy would indeed be inhumane. I believe we should both attempt to fight poverty and other causes as well as to create a very strong justice system for dealing with the effects of crime.

For all of you who talk about the South as a different country. . .It's not all that different anymore. Of course there is still the vowel shift that constitutes what people call "Southern drawl" or the Southern Dialect, and there is still the differences in culture that exist, but the South is a really nice place. People are generally really nice and friendly. In many Southern states, courtesy is still practiced on the roadways, something you DEFINATELY don't see in New York or New England. It honestly surprises most people when other drivers will literally pull of the road just to let a slightly faster driver go by. Pretty much everyone is really courteous in the South, some of the elements of the culture are really nice. Obviously there are problems in the South as well.

Most of the deep South has very poor standards in education, something that is not the case in what is called the "outer South". In the outer South, where I am from, you have the best average education systems in the country in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. My county in particular, Fairfax County, Virginia, has the highest rated secondary educational system in the country and the best SAT scores anywhere in the country (although that's probably because Fairfax County is where all the people who work for the U.S. Government live). In terms of university level (post-secondary) education, the Outer South has some of the best institutions in the country. The University of Virginia, where many of my friends attend, is consistently *the* best public institution in the country according to U.S. News' annual report on colleges. Duke, UNC, VT, William and Mary (oldest university in the United States, over 300 years old, which is minor compared to European schools), Vanderbilt, and a host of other excellent universities exist in the Outer South.

Personally, I think the Southern culture is probably the most genuine and friendly of the various cultures around the country. Particlurly people I've met from the deep South are some of the best and warmest people I've ever met. The whole Southern culture, architecture and everything, seems to revolve around a sense of community and being friendly to your neighbors. The existance of front porches on Southern houses is a simple example of this cultural difference with the rest of the country, where people tend to be much more aloof and apathetic toward the rest of their community compared to the South.

The South has, of course, had many historical problems, not the least of which has been slavery and segregation, and, later on, discrimination. However, given the high percentage of the population in the South of these minority groups, political and social equality has come a very long way. It's actually in many cases in large Northern and Californian cities where large masses of minority groups exist in utter poverty with the wide-spread growth of gang culture. The South has, amazingly, been able to somewhat avoid this, even though many Southern people, both minority and white, are very poor in comparison to other groups around the rest of our very rich country.

posted 12-09-98 07:21 PM ET            

Place like Traingle Park, Atlanta, or the Dallas Telecom Corridor.

So while you can still find patches of illiteracy and intolerance in the South (as well as the North), the stereotype does not have as broad an application as it did before.

posted 12-09-98 10:26 PM ET            

Altough technicly i probibly am not in the "true south" as i live in New Orleans. But still

Man i don't know about up in Virginia but down here we have some of the worst drivers i have ever seen!! And this from a person who has lived in both Boston and LA(actualy Californias are very good drivers)!

posted 12-09-98 10:45 PM ET            

Did anyone happen to notice where this story was written? Austin, Texas. Now, there was a comment about poor standards in education, and since I live in Austin, I may as well point out that it's known as Silicon Hills because of all the high-tech industries in the area. Going up to IBM, AMD, et al. and telling them they're uneducated is not a good plan .
Not, mind you, that I'm defending our (meaning the country, not just the state; Colorado at least is just as bad as Texas) education system. But that's a whole 'nother thread.

About the caning... I don't agree with the publicized US reaction of the time (does anyone recall what the majority reaction actualy was?). He did the crime there, he should pay there. Same applies to Faulder (and, for that matter, Clinton).

Courtesy on the roadways? Man, if this is courtesy, I am NEVER driving within twenty miles of New York.

posted 12-10-98 12:03 AM ET            

This is of course the problem with the death penalty - if it turns out to be the wrong person, you can't just release them and say, "Sorry, we really ****ed up. Here's a bunch of cash, now go restart your life"

It's probably impractical to have a law that makes the distinction between an uncertain, but beyond reasonable doubt case and a clear cut, 100% certain case. And the fact that Texas is prepared to put up with this level of doubt and still kill a guy probably says a lot about the people there and their concern for their fellow man.

It's been shown time and again that the death penalty is not a deterent, certainly there's no difference between death and a 20 year prison term. People will commit these crimes no matter what - because they 'have' too (for whatever personal motivation), or because they greatly underestimate the chance of being caught.

Am I in favour of caning - hell yes. It's one of the misguided notions of the west that the only good way to punish someone is to lock them up for ever increasing periods of time. And justice is as much about revenge as it is about rehabilitation.

But ultimately you have to draw the line somewhere. And no permanent harm should be inflicted, because no system (least of all Texas...) is 100% perfect. Once you start taking innocent lives, you're only interested in revenge, not justice. It's okay that it might not be the right guy, as long as some nasty piece of disrepecting scum dies to ease your grief. The death penalty is jugdement by arrogance, and the most arrogant people are rarely the best at their job.

posted 12-10-98 12:36 AM ET            

The spin that the media are putting on teh execution up here is that he may have been found guilty twice, but the trials were hardly fair. The claim is that on the first trial he was convicted because teh police beat a confession out of him and in the second trial he was convicted because the family of the dead woman paid a bunch of people to take teh stand and say "he did it".

He may very well be guilty. The papers here acknowledge the fact that he has never pleaded his innocence. In court, he plead "not guilty". We're just unhappy that the Texas "justice" system includes bribing witnesses and ignoring UN treaties. (Appearently it wasn't until many years after his conviction that he was told that he was allowed to contact the Canadian government.)

posted 12-10-98 02:20 AM ET            

Some new info.

And the family did not "Bribe" whitnesses. And this guy never even said he was a Canadian till he got thrown in jail. He had a US Drivers card for goodness sake.

posted 12-10-98 02:29 AM ET            

Sorry, I don't know anything about this case. It just pisses me off when people present their beliefs or POVs as absolute facts.

posted 12-10-98 07:58 AM ET            

One: Will someone please prove that the death penalty or even prison are deterrants to people willing otherwise to commit crime?

Two: In such a case where there is still some doubt (not a lot but some) the death penalty should not be used. Life in prison with no parole would be better because there is that 1% chance he is innocent.

Heckler

posted 12-11-98 04:26 PM ET            

Nex time i will say "Legaly" there is no evidence of such a action.

posted 12-14-98 06:46 AM ET            

The various Ivy League schools were listed in the top 20. Harvard was listed as #1, although I happen to think Harvard is VASTLY overrated (given that every Harvard grad I have ever met was a complete moron AND given that funny little survey put out a few years ago that found that over 70% of Harvard grads didn't know the reason the Earth has seasons. . .)

All of those Ivy League schools are listed as "private" schools, given that even the Land Grant Act ones (Cornell for instance) no longer subsist off of state funding. The "public" schools are all of those big state schools that receive lots of state funding.

The #1 "public" institution is the University of Virginia.