[Gene Randall, Cnn Anchor:] Convicted killer Gary Graham is scheduled to be executed in Texas on Thursday. Protesters at the state's Republican convention yesterday blamed the GOP-controlled state penal system for unfairly putting to death innocent blacks, Hispanics and the poor. Both candidates for president support capital punishment, but could it become a campaign issue? Here is Bruce Morton.
[Bruce Morton, Cnn Correspondent:] Throughout his campaign, Governor George W. Bush has defended the death penalty and the way it has worked in the 134 executions held in Texas during his time in office.
[Bush:] And I'm absolutely confident that everybody who has been put to death is two things: one, they're guilty of the crime charged, and secondly, they had full access to our courts, both state and federal.
[Morton:] Bush is confident despite a "Chicago Tribune" investigation which showed irregularities: a pathologist who admitted faking autopsies, a psychiatrist who testified defendants he'd never met were certain to commit more violence, lawyers who slept in court, and so on. Bush's Democratic opponent, Al Gore, has not made the death penalty an issue; He's for it, too.
[Gore:] I do support capital punishment, and I have always supported it.
[Morton:] And he defends Bush, telling "The New York Times": "If the record shows he's done a terrible job, then I'm sure that would be a legitimate issue. I haven't reached that conclusion." Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions in January: 13 Illinois death row inmates have been proved innocent since capital punishment was reinstated there in 1977.
[Gore:] If there were the kind of record they found in Illinois in some other criminal justice system, then it would, in my view, justify a moratorium, just as in Illinois.
[Morton:] Gore opposes a federal moratorium and has not endorsed a bill ensuring that prison inmates get access to DNA evidence which might prove them innocent. Gore may remember past campaigns when Republicans labeled Democrats soft on crime, as in this ad from 1988. [Begin Video Clip, 1988 Bush Campaign Ad]
[Announcer:] As Governor Michael Dukakis vetoed mandatory sentences for drug dealers, he vetoed the death penalty.
[Morton:] A Gallup poll last February shows 66 percent of Americans favor the death penalty, down from 80 percent in 1994, but still a substantial majority. And that's another reason Gore may not want to make it an issue in his campaign. Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
[Randall:] More now on the politics of capital punishment with John Parker, Washington bureau chief of "The Economist" magazine. John, what chance do you think there is that capital punishment will end up as a campaign issue this year?
[John Parker, "the Economist":] Directly, not a great deal of chance. As your report said, both candidates support it, so I don't think there will be a great deal to debate there. What I think might happen is the debate might play on that underlying sense that the Gore campaign will presumably want to get across that the governor of Texas is kind of a little bit shallow. And they might try to make this charge stick against him there.
[Randall:] But would this be a political tightrope, with so much of the country favoring capital punishment, for the vice president to attack his Republican opponent over capital punishment?
[Parker:] Yes, I think it would. In fact, he'd be he'd have to do it very, very carefully. He's only got to look around to his immediate sort of past history of people around him. Bill Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, got defeated in his first term partly because he pardoned a number of death penalty cases.
[Randall:] And during Bill Clinton's first run for the presidency, he took time out from his campaign to return to Arkansas to fulfill his duties as governor to oversee the execution of a defendant who had been convicted of murder.
[Parker:] Yes, and my conclusion for that is, you know, no one ever got defeated underestimating the sort of appetite for the death penalty.
[Randall:] Now what do you make of the national debate which has been he sparked by the action of Republican Governor George Ryan of Illinois, who has put in place a moratorium on executions?
[Parker:] It's long overdue, in my view, I was shocked, really, when I first discovered the extent of the problems in the capital punishment system. There was a recent study from professor Joe Lieberman at Columbia University which showed that over two-thirds of all the convictions made in the first court were overturned in some stage. That seems to me to be very, very worrying on any measure.
[Randall:] And what do you make of Governor Bush's use, for the first time, of a delay in an execution for 30 days because of this DNA question?
[Parker:] That's a very good question. I think that was probably long overdue, too. I can't help feeling that if he hadn't been running for president, one wonders whether he would have done this. But I think that DNA evidence, which is actually quite rare in death penalty cases, but where it is appropriate, I think there's almost like an open-and-shut case for you to use it. I mean, he was right, therefore, in my view to give the stay.
[Randall:] Do you think this debate, which to some extent is below the radar screen, the debate kicked off by Governor Ryan's action in Illinois, will catch up to the presidential campaign and will and the two will become intertwined at some point?
[Parker:] I think it might. I doubt it will ever become quite the issue that it was in the '88 campaign, for example, when you remember the Willie Horton case, as it was referred to. That, of course, was really a death penalty case, a death penalty debate, as well as a sort of debate, unfortunately, about race. I doubt it will have quite that power, but, yes, I do think that it will become intertwined at some point.
[Randall:] John Parker of "The Economist" magazine, thanks very much.
[Parker:] Thank you.