190.2. (a) The penalty for a defendant who is found guilty of
murder in the first degree is death or imprisonment in the state
prison for life without the possibility of parole if one or more of
the following special circumstances has been found under Section
190.4 to be true:
(17) The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in,
or was an accomplice in, the commission of, attempted commission of,
or the immediate flight after committing, or attempting to commit,
the following felonies:
(A) Robbery in violation of Section 211 or 212.5.

Regardless, I am happy and frankly stunned to see that the Board decided to commute the sentence. This a a rare day for them.

http://www.news8austin.com/con…..rID=191107

Board votes 6-1 to commute sentence. Now it’s all up to Governor Goodhair Perry.

Can any of you truly say that he had no idea that one of his partners who was ROBBING PEOPLE WITH A GUN that night might kill someone? Grow up. The idea that you can’t be punished for murder unless you intended to kill someone and you pulled the trigger is nonsense.

Conspiracy and felony murder laws are based on the idea that we don’t want people conspiring to commit armed robbery’s because things are likely to go wrong and people get killed. That is why we punish them the same as murder. If you don’t like Texas or the death penalty fine, but what Texas did here is no different than what many other States would have done.

Texas needs to be carved out and set off on its own or give it back to Mexico. That is one state that I am not proud to say is part of our country.

I’d love to go to Austin, but on principal, will never again set foot in the state of Texas (unless it, unforunately, involves a layover at the airport).

To MarkH: The left is just as incoherent about life as the right is. We oppose war and the death penalty on principle, but allow aborions for fetuses that are technically viable. If the left was truly principled on this issue, we would allow pregnancy termination only in the first few months.

Presumably you wouldn’t care if Foster had pulled the trigger himself, and laughed while he did it, and shot five other people that night.

The “technicality” he was convicted of is essentially felony murder. People are charged and convicted of that all the time.

The purpose of the law is to discourage just the kind of behavior that Foster was engaged in – being the wheel-man for a night of violent robberies and carjackings.

Perhaps the next car-jacker wannabe will have a harder time finding someone to give him a lift to the scene of his next crime.

If you want to know why the GOP can too often paint the Dems as ’soft on crime’, they don’t have to look much further than here.

…
When I moved to Ohio from NM, I mentioned to a co-worker something about the Kent State killings. “They deserved it,” she said.
It isn’t just Texas.

She may have thought that all who were killed had been in the large protest group. They weren’t. Ignorance is definitely bliss. Immorality is simply intolerable.

Texas is the crime free paradise of the US because executions stop all crime. At least that’s what the Republics say.

What IS the crime rate there and how does that compare to other states? How about for just violent crime or crimes using a firearm?

It makes no sense for them to be ‘pro life’ and ‘pro death’ except that the underlying idea is that they want to be able to say THEY control YOU completely, from birth to death. They say the Dems run a ‘nanny state’, but it’s the Repubs who want to manipulate and control everything…to fight terrorism I suppose.

Sickos.

Incidentally, everybody has got to see Michael Moore’s movie Sicko. It’s very good.