By Robbie Byrd
Kenneth Foster, a man who was all but assured a visit inside Texas’ execution chamber Thursday night, won a last-minute reprieve from Gov. Rick Perry only six hours before his execution was to begin.
The Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles issued a rare and last-minute recommendation to Perry seven hours before the execution was scheduled to commence to commute the 30-year-old Foster’s death sentence, one of only three such since Texas resumed executing prisoners in 1982.
“The first thing I did was drop to my knees and say a little prayer,” Foster said of hearing the news. “I owe a lot of people.”
Perry — who can grant clemency only after receiving a majority recommendation from the board — said he agreed with the board and would grant the life-saving reprieve.
“After carefully considering the facts of this case, along with the recommendations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” Perry said in a written statement.
The last time the board recommended a commutation of a death sentence was in 2005, when they urged Perry to grant a reprieve to a mentally ill man, according to the Associated Press.
Perry rejected the board and Kelsey Patterson was executed, claiming he had been acquitted and that the state was stealing “me and my family’s money.”
Perry has offered commutations in the past, but only under extreme pressure from the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the court ruled that the state could not execute those under 18 years of age at the time of the crime and those who were mentally retarded, Perry commuted the sentence of two mentally ill men and 28 others who were juveniles.
The board voted 6-1 to commute Foster’s sentence to life in prison.
Foster is headed back to death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston while the Texas Department of Criminal Justice processed paperwork. He will be transferred to another unit.
Foster had been convicted under Texas’ controversial “Law of Parties” statute, and had faced lethal injection Thursday for his role as the getaway driver when a San Antonio man was gunned down on his driveway in 1996.
Foster was also charged with two felony robbery counts for at least four robberies that occurred on the same night.
according to the Texas Attorney General’s office. He had a history of assault with a deadly weapon and cocaine and marijuana posession.
Foster claims — and the prosecution agrees — he had no part in the physical killing of then 25-year-old Michael Lahood Jr.
However, the statute allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases where during “a conspiracy to commit one felony another felony is committed by one of the conspirators.”
The statute says prosecutors can find all co-conspirators guilty, even if they “had no intent to commit” a crime.
Five more executions are scheduled for September and one is set for October. If all are carried out, Texas will have reached 29 executions for the year, the highest number in one year since 33 condemned were executed in 2002.
