Texas executes Chris Young, who fought the National Parole Board in a final appeal

In his last fight before his performance on Tuesday night, Chris Young targeted the secret leniency process of Texas

On Friday, the Pardons and Lyrics Council of Texas unanimously rejected the leniency application. Young – often the last check on the death penalty. before an inmate is sent to the death chamber. A few hours later, Young's lawyers sued the board members, claiming that they had probably voted against a recommendation to reduce his sentence or to suspend his execution because he was black [19659003]. Tuesday, a few hours before the state put him to death for the theft and murder of Hasmukh Patel in 2004 at the Patel store in San Antonio. At 18:13, Young, 34, was injected with a fatal dose of pentobarbital compound and was pronounced dead 25 minutes later.

"I want to make sure the Patel family knows that I love them as they like me. in his closing statement, probably referring to Patel 's son who objected to the execution: "Make sure the children in the world know that I am executed and that the children that I am. have accompanied continue this fight.

Although it failed, the late filing brought to light a well-established criticism of Texas clemency – the reasoning for the council's decision is unknown to the community. Although members must certify that they do not not vote because of the race of the detainee, nor do they have to give reason for their decision.

"Their procedures and all the rest are internal, you can not see it," said Keith Hampton, a defense lawyer who has worked on two of Texas' three capital clemency petitions over the past 20 years . the lawyers over there … they all pass on it, but I have no idea why they reject it, and they do not have to say why. "

A Texas court of appeal confirmed the boards' ability to explain refusals of leniency solely by the number of votes." The state noted in its response to the filing that the appeal did not indicate any specific evidence of racial discrimination.

Tuesday morning, US District Judge Keith Ellison reluctantly rejected the filing, expressing his frustration at the inability of his court to allow "[19659009] Without direct evidence of racial discrimination, he stated that Young was unlikely to succeed if this case was finally heard, which forced him to dismiss the appeal. such discrimination with only a few days between execution and the clemency decision is "almost impossible."

"Those who engage in racial discrimination rarely announce their motives," writes Ellison. is not a small tragedy die that & # 39; in the & # 39; s case, neither the plaintiff nor the defendants never know what role, if any, racial prejudice played "

Young was 21 when he entered Patel's San Antonio store in 2004 and fatally shot Patel during an attempted robbery, according to court records. In his recent motion to the Parole Board seeking a death sentence instead of the death penalty, his lawyers cited his growth in jail – they claim that he prevented the assault on his life. an inmate on a guardian and a suicide and that he relieved racial tension on death row – and the fact that Patel's son, Mitesh, also pleaded for the state to save the day. 39; murderer of his father

whose life was recently spared by the board of governors and Governor Greg Abbott – Thomas Whitaker, who was convicted in the expected deaths of his family in 2003, killing his mother and his brother and wounding his father in a plot to obtain the inheritance. Whitaker's father became his most ardent defender, fighting for the life of his son who killed the rest of his family and nearly killed him too. Others on death row also wrote to the Parole Board explaining how helpful Whitaker was to his detained comrades.

"Whitaker and Young are very much alike," wrote David Dow, Young's lawyer. "Whitaker and Young were transformed, both expressed genuine remorse, both were positive forces in prison, and most importantly, the surviving relatives of the killings objected to the execution." [19659002EarlierthisyeartheParoleBoardvotedunanimouslyforWhitakerrecommendingthatthegovernorchangehissentencetoprisonandhalthisnextexecutionAfewminutesbeforehisexecutionAbbottgrantedclemencyandThomasWhitakerhassincebeenmovedoutofdeathrowalthoughhewillstillspendtherestofhislifebehindbars

Young and Whitaker, according to Young's lawyers, is probably because Whitaker is white

"This vote is probably explained by a single variable – a variable that the Constitution prevents policy makers from considering: race," writes Dow, citing racial disparities which affect all aspects of criminal justice. system.

The state responded to Young's allegations of racial discrimination in court on Sunday, claiming that Young's arguments for clemency were "much weaker" than Whitaker's. Deputy Attorney General Stephen Hoffman outlined the factors excluded from Young's application, including an alleged sexual assault just prior to Patel's murder, previous convictions of felony and death row disciplinary reports. The answer also notes that, unlike Young, Whitaker was not the trigger in the murders of his loved ones.

"Young provides no direct evidence that a member of the Board acted with racial animality and infers only discrimination based on disparate treatment in"

A Veiled Decision

Since 1998, a governor of Texas spared only three times the life of a person facing imminent execution, according to data obtained from the Parole Board.Over the same two decades, there has been more 400 executions in Texas

.Clemency petitions are designed to be a final check of the system immediately prior to the killing of an inmate.Inmates who have received dates of execution may request the parole board and the governor to change their death sentence to life imprisonment.

Staff collects all relevant documents from other officials and , usually, board members for a countdown two business days before the run. If a majority opts for leniency, the recommendation is subject to the approval of the Governor

.

Abbott's predecessor, Republican Rick Perry, chose to reduce the death penalty to life imprisonment for only one inmate (US Supreme Court Decisions have forced him to cut back on 39; other sentences) in his 14-year term. He also rejected the board's recommendations in at least two other cases. Whitaker clemency was the first and only recommendation of Abbott's board up here.

Because of the tiny success rate of these cases and the secrecy surrounding the process, groups of lawyers and several lawmakers have criticized the Texas leniency procedures in capital cases

. In 1998, the judge US District Sam Sparks has termed it "extremely poor and certainly minimal". Sparks insisted on how the public is kept out of council's remarks and said no member had read the petitions.

In 2005, state Sen. Rodney Ellis of the time, D-Houston, unsuccessfully filed a law requiring council to hold a live hearing for each case of death row inmates . Mr Hampton said legislators were convinced that it would be too costly to hold leniency hearings before each execution.

The board may now hold hearings, but it is not required to do so. A spokeswoman for the Parole Board said Tuesday that the last hearing held in a leniency case was in 1995.

Hampton also noted the lack of guidelines for members council to determine whether there was room to pardon. In the case of Kenneth Foster in 2007, who also obtained a rare recommendation of clemency from the board of directors, Mr. Hampton stated that he had drafted several versions of the petition because he did not did not know what the jury was going to impose.

The immediate family member's appeal of a victim and the growth of an inmate's prison, both of which were focused on Whitaker's and Young's petition. But the center of his argument for Foster was something else.

"It was said years later that the argument that resonated was a religious argument that I had made," he said. "Knowing this, I put it in the foreground [in Whitaker’s case]."

But for Young, Whitaker's attempt at rapprochement with himself seemed to have failed among the Parole Board members. Instead of being expelled from death row to another prison, he was sent to the death chamber, becoming the eighth person executed in Texas this year, and the twelfth in the nation