Texas, the quickest on the execution draw of any state in the nation, has passed on killing Kenneth Foster. The death sentence for the 30-year-old man, who drove a getaway car from the scene of a San Antonio murder, was commuted by Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday, hours before Foster’s scheduled death by lethal injection. On Wednesday, the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles had voted overwhelmingly for the commutation.
While applying the death penalty to accomplices to a capital crime is established law in Texas, Perry expressed discomfort with the law and urged the state's legislature to review it.
The governor has not always been so lenient, The New York Times notes. In 2004, Perry refused to concur with the Board of Pardons and Paroles' recommendation that he commute the sentence of Kelsey Patterson, a diagnosed schizophrenic.
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