HENRY LEE LUCAS: A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

Ever since the cradle of what we call modern civilization people have always passionately stood for what they thought was right and just to them. The beliefs each person carries are entirely their own and as diverse as the cultures they come from. Some are for the death penalty, others are against it. This will not be about being for or against anything, it is a chronicle of facts so that you the reader can make your own decision to where you stand on this particular case. So whether you're an extreme right-wing Republican or a liberal Democrat, I urge you to set aside your political views and just come to the table as a blank slate to make your own conclusions if you personally believe justice was truly served, or was it completely blind.

The Drifter

Time has softened the rough and tumble features of what some believe to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern memory. But even though time and prison have softened some of his facial features and greyed his hair, his demeanor has remained as cold as it was the day he was taken into custody, only showing remorse for his own situation not for the actions that brought him to this endgame. Lucas would come to blame all of his callousness and complete lack of empathy on his hard childhood and even harder mother. There is absolutely no doubt that his early years were the stuff of nightmares living in a small cabin with his legless father and and a mother who drank her own moonshine and turned tricks in the family home often forcing Lucas and his father to watch as she did so. Coming from a home with an extreme amount of violence and very little education Lucas really never stood a chance in a very harsh world, so he did what he had to survive at first and as he got older his violent ways escalated and in his bloody wake he left a trail of corpses, a number that has fluctuated so many times law enforcement cannot even guess the actual number of victims. Lucas is a pathelogical liar that much is not in dispute. Even if it has been proven he did not commit many of the crimes he so willingly confessed to it still leaves 3 murders that in fact he is guilty of. We know Lucas brutally stabbed his mother with a knife on January 12, 1960, Lucas would later claim Viola had awoken him out of one of his many drunken stuppors by beating him with a broom claiming he had only killed her in self defense, the courts rejected this claim and Lucas served 15 years for that murder. It is important to note that Lucas has since his confession of over 600 murders he has recanted every single murder even the 11 murders he was convicted of. Lucas was sent to death row for the "Orange Socks" murder, in which a woman was brutally raped and murdered then discarded like common trash. Lucas had orginally confessed to the murder then recanted as he did hundreds of times with other murders.

The Governor

The very same year that Lucas was 'knifed' by his brother and as a result lost his eye, the boy that would later decide his future was being born in Conneticut. George Bush Jr.'s early childhood was in sharp contrast to that of Lucas's, whereas Lucas had abuse and mistreatment, Bush had by all accounts a very stable and loving upbringing in Texas. Bush had his share of loss early on when his sister Robin died from leukemia when he was still a young boy. While we can imagine this tragedy affected Bush, he certainly did not deal with his deeper emotional distress the same way Lucas did. While Lucas struggled and commited many crimes due to not only his increasingly mental state but due to his own abject poverty, Bush was afforded all the privileges of a growing boy born to an upperclass family that would later become almost like political royalty. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush had served as a state senator for Conneticut and set the tone for the long standing polictical hunger that would fuel the family for years to come. In his younger years Bush had his own brushes with the law, though not to extent of Lucas, from his drinking and excessive college boy type ways. But in 1977 that lifestyle started to take a back seat when Bush met what he would later say was the stablizing effect in his life, his wife Laura Welch. Welch herself having had a brush with the law when in 1963 she struck a car which resulted in the death of the driver, now had her life on the straight a narrow, as one would expect from the future first lady. After whirlwind few month romance the couple was married and a year after the wedding Bush had his first taste of how the poltical game really worked when he lost his first campaign running for House of Representatives from Texas's 19th congressional district. Bush not detered from his path but knowing he needed to gain better footing with the common man, his opponent branding him as out of touch with rural Texans during the election, Bush waited and gathered support while working in the oil industry. Bush was schooled in proper campaigning when he served as the campaign advisor for his father's bid for becoming the President in 1988. In 1994 as Jeb Bush sought governership of Florida, George Bush Jr. made his next political move and became the Governer of Texas.

Orange Socks

Halloween is usually a time of kids in costumes running the streets in droves searching for their candy in neighborhoods, but in 1979 it held a much darker search, a search for a cold blooded murderer. The Jane Doe that was given the nickname 'Orange Socks' was found brutally raped and strangled, the only clothing found on the unidentified girl was her bright orange socks, and a towel found next to her body that was thought to been have used in place of a santiary napkin for her mentrusation. The strange thing about this supposed hitchhiker was that although her legs had been unshaven for some time she had no signs of ever breaking a bone in her life, and she was missing two teeth the rest were extremely well taken care of for a street girl. Her body was found thrown over the guard rail of interstate 35, tossed carelessly, like one would throw away a tissue you had finished using. I mention her because I feel its important to show how brutal the last seconds of her life must have been and with going through such horror she deserves to be remembered since her murder is the reason Lucas was on death row for after all. It is important to note that very little physical evidence was found at the scene, and unfortunatly it was in the days before DNA testing became the powerhouse it is today. All that was found with her body was two match books, one belonged to a hotel in okalahoma, the other match book's origin is not noted in the reports I have obtained. Lucas confessed to the crime in 1982, but despite his shaky recalling of the crime and the many prompts he would need to keep his story straight Lucas was convicted in 1984 of the murder of this poor unidentified girl. Lucas would later after his conviction recant this and many other murders he had confessed to, but many thinking the devil himself was now sitting on death row, failed to follow up on the proper evidence until years later.

Commutation

Its hard to say for sure what murders if any the Lucas commited since some are very plausable and others like ' Orange Socks' are questionable at best. I will not say Lucas is an innocent man or that he was anything but pure evil, but there are questions about this particular murder that make prosecution not seem like they were on the up and up the entire time. A good example is Lucas's taped confession they played during his trial, not only did it 'accidently' contain other confessions to other murders by Lucas but during the confession Lucas had stated he had consentual sex with the girl, this part was purposely edited out during his trial, without proving the brutal rape the state could not at the time seek the death penalty. Lucas's lawyers tried to save his life despite their client not wanting them to, they later found a cashier who verified that they had cashed Lucas's payroll check in Florida on November 1, 1979, proving that Lucas was no where near Texas at the time og the murder. Was justice truely being served in the state of Texas with the execution of Lucas looming ever so closer? This must have been the delema that faced Governor Bush in 1998, along with the mounting evidence that gave reasonable doubt to the guilt of Lucas for that particular heinious act. Or was the pressure the state of Texas was under by the press for carrying out an unpresidented thirty-seven state sanctioned executions in 1997? Either way during his re-election year in 1998 Governor Bush commuted Lucas's death sentence to life in prison, knowing he would never be released due his still standing 10 convictions of murder. It is important to point out that Lucas is the only commutation Bush did his entire time as governor. The important question is why Lucas? There were much more deserving people who were actually innocent who could have used that second chance. A shining example is that of Claude Jones, convicted in 1989 of killing an east Texas liquor store owner. A hair was found at the scene, believed to be Jones's, was in fact the store'e owner's hair. Jones requested a stay of execution the day he was sentenced to die, to have the hair tested, but Governor Bush denied that request in 2000. Jones's sentence was carried out as scheduled and now the DNA evidence proves he most likely had nothing to do with the murder, so it is very possible the state of texas executed a innocent man. It makes one wonder if Jones had the intense media coverage Lucas had or if he had been scheduled to die in a re-election year, would he be alive to see the only real evidence that proved he was at the scene be disproven. Lucas had his reprieve from death, but death was not willing to wait, in 2001 Lucas died as a result of heart failure, the sentence he had avoided had finally been carried out.