From [HERE] The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and state Governor Rick Perry should grant clemency to an African American man due to be executed on 18 October for a crime committed when he was only 19 years old, Amnesty International said. 

Anthony Haynes, now 33, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the fatal shooting of off-duty police officer Kent Kincaid – who was white – in Houston a year earlier. Claims of racial discrimination, inadequate legal representation and judicial and prosecutorial misconduct have marked the case.

“To obtain a death sentence for Anthony Haynes, the prosecution had to persuade the jury that he would be an ongoing threat to society, even in prison. The state’s case was weak – the defendant had no prior criminal record – but it was helped by the failure of the defence lawyers to present compelling mitigating evidence available to them,” said Rob Freer, USA researcher at Amnesty International.