Unfortunately, this conclusion is belied by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The actual record in Texas is littered with injustices, with cases of men and women routinely denied due process, as well as cases of innocent people who may have been executed. For Bush to claim certainty suggests either he is hopelessly uninformed or not telling the truth. If he has not thoroughly informed himself of the issues in these life and death matters, it demonstrates the most extreme nonfeasance of office. If, on the other hand, he has done his homework, it is simply not credible for him to claim certainty.

The June execution of Graham did more to undermine Bush's credibility on his certainty claim than any capital case under his watch because it raised serious questions of both innocence and due process. It wasn't that people didn't think Graham was capable of murder. After all, he had shot one defenseless man in the neck. It was rather that fair-minded people looking at the entire record in the murder for which he was condemned couldn't make up their minds about Graham's guilt.

The evidence was ambiguous. Graham was condemned to death on the basis of testimony by a single eyewitness, Bernadine Skillern, who acknowledged that she only saw the assailant for two seconds at a distance of 30 to 40 feet. There was also evidence that Skillern was coached by police, who showed her a photo array of possible suspects, before being asked to review a real-life lineup. The only suspect in both lineups was Graham. Another witness who said he also saw the shooter did not pick Graham out of the lineup. But this witness and a second exculpatory witness were never interviewed by Graham's lawyer and neither testified at Graham's trial. There were so many questions about Graham's guilt and his incompetent representation that even the somnambulant Board of Pardons and Paroles produced five votes recommending that the death sentence be commuted to life in prison.

Did Bush execute an innocent man? We'll probably never know for sure. In his autobiography the governor writes, "The worst nightmare of a death penalty supporter and of everyone who believes in our criminal justice system is to execute an innocent man." But Bush isn't losing any sleep over Graham's execution. "I am confident that justice is being done," he said shortly before Graham was given a lethal injection.

Gary Graham was not, however, the only person executed under Bush who raised troubling questions about innocence. In 1997 David Spence was sent to his death for the grisly stabbing deaths of three teenagers, protesting his innocence until the end. Doubts were raised about Spence's guilt because the extremely brutal murders, which would have necessarily involved extensive contact with the victims, produced no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Hairs found on the mutilated remains did not match Spence. And there was testimony that Spence was framed by police. The state's chief witness against Spence, as well as two jailhouse informants, later recanted their testimony and charged that police had pressured them to lie. Bush has never publicly commented on the case.

In repeatedly assuring the public that no innocent person could possibly have been executed under his watch, Bush never mentions that seven innocent men have been found on Texas' death row in the past 12 years, including one during Bush's first term in office. (A recent Scripps-Howard Poll found that 57 percent of Texans surveyed believe Texas has executed someone who was innocent of the crime. A recent Gallup Poll shows 46 percent of Americans believe an innocent person has been executed in Texas since Bush took office.) More importantly, he brushes over the fact that he himself worked hard to pass legislation that clearly increases the likelihood that innocent people will be executed by reducing the time between conviction and execution from nine years to seven or less.

One needn't be a cynic or hold a Yale B.A. to appreciate that, if Bush's law had been in effect over the past decade, the seven men released from death row would have almost certainly been executed. Bush can talk all he wants about the need for victims' families to have "closure," but there is no escaping the fact that speeding up the execution process increases the likelihood that innocent people will be executed -- that there will be new victims.

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