MEMBER OFFERS LOOK INSIDE PAROLE BOARD

AUSTIN " Paddy Burwell, a South Texas rancher and Marine veteran of the
Korean War, says he's "just a caring guy who tries to do what's right."

It's that simple philosophy that led him last week to be the lone member of
the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to oppose the execution of convicted
murderer Javier SuA rez Medina.

Burwell dissented in a 16-1 decision to recommend that Gov. Rick Perry
refuse SuA rez Medina a 90-day reprieve, a recommendation Perry followed.

The subsequent Aug. 14 SuA rez Medina execution soured relations between
the United States and Mexico, and caused Mexican President Vicente Fox to
cancel a long-anticipated trip to Texas next week that would have included
a visit with Perry in the Governor's Mansion.

Mexicans and supporters of SuA rez Medina, who was born in Piedras Negras,
said he was denied the right to contact the Mexican Consulate after his
arrest, as is ordered in a 1963 international treaty.

"Human rights is a key issue to this government," Fox said Wednesday in an
interview with U.S. journalists. "We will always be asking clemency (for
Mexicans facing execution)."

The death penalty isn't an option in Mexico.

In a rare peek inside the Board of Pardons and Paroles, Burwell, appointed
to the panel in 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush, spoke bluntly about his
colleagues and his views on the death penalty.

"I think we need to abide by our treaties and look at the death penalty
carefully," he said. "And if we do apply it, we need to apply it very
carefully."

Burwell acknowledged to "struggling" with cases involving the mentally
retarded, with death row inmates who have turned their lives around in
prison and with mitigating factors such as sex, age and race.

"I believe you should be defended with every bit of vigor a defense
attorney has," he said, adding that juries often are swayed by a natural
desire to be tough on crime.

"I think juries can be misled. Most (jurors) think police and prosecutors
are good guys, but many of them are victory driven."

And, he said, "like many folks," some members of the Board of Pardons and
Paroles have "a kind of macho attitude."

"You gotta be careful about that hanging thing."

There has been no epiphany in his life, and Burwell said he still supports
the death penalty.

"A person who rapes and sodomizes a 3-year-old baby girl and then crushes
her skull " that's the price you pay for committing that kind of crime,"
he said.

But his service on the board has sensitized him to the ultimate punishment,
he added.

Burwell participated this summer in a "Death Penalty Dialogue" at Columbia
University.

The panel included anti-death penalty activist and Columbia law Professor
James Liebman and 17 others, among them William Sessions, the former FBI
director and San Antonio federal judge, and Travis County District Attorney
Ronnie Earle.

Burwell and Earle later signed a letter written by Liebman that was to be
presented to the National District Attorneys Association. It urged
deliberation in seeking the death penalty, calling it a "grave and somber
matter," one that calls for a "sober and reflective process."

Sessions didn't sign the letter.

Burwell did, but now says, "I probably should not have signed it."

Weighing his options, though, he contends, "The death penalty is
appropriate in certain cases, but I'm pretty sure it's not applied fairly.

"Burwell also weighed in on several other recent high-profile cases:

He voted to commute the death sentence of Napoleon Beazley, a black convict
who was 17 years old when he shot Tyler civic leader John Luttig in 1994.
He was executed May 28 at age 26.

"That whole trial was prejudicial," Burwell said, pointing out the jury was
all white and that Luttig's son, a federal judge in Virginia, moved his
office to Tyler for the trial and regularly consulted with prosecutors.

He voted to execute Oliver Cruz, the San Antonian who raped and murdered
Kelly Donovan, a young Air Force enlisted woman, in 1988. Cruz was executed
Aug. 8, 2000, over objections from lawyers who contended he was retarded.

"Slow, maybe, but he wasn't retarded," Burwell said. .

And he voted to execute Joseph Faulder, a Canadian immigrant who was
executed June 17, 1999, for burglarizing the Gladewater home of Inez
Phillips and then beating and stabbing her to death."

So, I guess that makes me look like a hypocrite," Burwell said of the
Canadian's execution, "but I felt comfortable with that vote and the (SuA
rez Medina) vote."

SuA rez Medina, 33, murdered Dallas undercover police officer Lawrence
Cadena in 1988 during a drug sting.

The flap over whether Texas violated SuA rez Medina's human rights " as
well as the Mexicans' failure to fulfill terms of a 1944 binational water
treaty " has caused ruffled feathers on both sides of the border.

Just before he was given the injection that would end his life Aug. 14, SuA
rez Medina apologized to Cadena's family and said, in Spanish:

"To all the people of Mexico, I would like to thank them for the help. If
you are going to demonstrate, I don't want you to do anything crazy to
these people. They have suffered enough.

"Burwell, a DeWitt County rancher, said he's never witnessed an execution,
but is willing to.

He also said he doesn't care about getting reappointed to the board when
his term ends in 2005.

"I'm 70 years old," he said. "I have no axes to grind and don't have anyone
to please. I'd just like to do the right thing."