Off the Hot Seat
Lightning Rod
By Erica C. Barnett, Fri., July 16, 1999
Rodriguez admits he was unprepared for the controversy that first rocked the board in 1997, when 16 of the board's 18 members voted to deny clemency to Karla Faye Tucker (two abstained), making the born-again Christian the first woman executed in Texas in over a century. Not that he suffered any second thoughts. Before Tucker's execution, Rodriguez (who has only voted for clemency once) said he was unconvinced by her claims of religious conversion and angered by the fact that Tucker lied to him about the details of her crime during a rare personal interview.
During the three months the board considered Tucker's clemency petition, Rodriguez was besieged by what he calls personal attacks from parole board critics. Early letters, he says, were cordial: "Things like, 'Dear Mr. Rodriguez, please think carefully about this decision, thank you very much.'" But over time, the letters grew more terse and more direct. Finally, after the board voted to deny Tucker's clemency petition, the letters got personal: "People saying things like, 'How could you do this; you've got blood on your hands; you're going to die,'" Rodriguez says. "And it was very hard not letting myself become personally engaged at that point. The kind of mail I get can be very intense." Rodriguez says that he responds personally to every piece of mail he receives at his office. "There is no stamp in this office with my name on it. I sign every piece of mail that I send out by hand."
After Tucker's execution, Rodriguez grudgingly settled into his role as a lightning rod for anti-death-penalty criticism. The board has had plenty to answer for in the last few years, as critics of its secretive clemency procedure -- in which board members decide alone, behind closed doors, whether to recommend clemencXy in death row cases -- have become increasingly vocal and influential. Criticism of the board has been far-reaching, ranging from the Texas Legislature, where several bills to force the board to meet in person before making clemency decisions were heard last session, to the daily press, which has chastized the board for refusing to open its procedures up to public scrutiny. Others, less visible but no less vocal, have challenged the board on its inscrutable clemency criteria, claiming that a process which has only resulted in one grant of clemency in the 17 years since executions resumed in Texas does more to expedite the death penalty system than it does to provide mercy for inmates who deserve it.
The Quality of Mercy
Rodriguez has said on many occasions that clemency decisions "are the hardest decisions we have to make," but opponents wonder why the board has seen fit to grant clemency only once in its history -- for Henry Lee Lucas, the hyperbolic inmate who once claimed to have killed more than 600 people.
Sandra Babcock, a Minneapolis attorney, represented Joseph Stanley Faulder, the Canadian who was recently executed despite concerns over whether Texas had violated the Vienna Convention treaty by failing to notify the Canadian consulate upon his arrest in 1975. Babcock says she has trouble believing Rodriguez's assertion that clemency decisions are so difficult, given the fact that he, along with several other members of the board, have admitted under oath that they do not typically read all the material in clemency applications.
"Basically, I thought that was all an act; on the one hand, he thinks these are the hardest cases he has to consider, while on the other hand, he's never seen a case that he sees fit to investigate or that justifies a hearing," Babcock says. "I sense some hypocrisy, because he didn't feel it was necessary to give even the most minimal investigation of the reasons for a clemency decision." Rodriguez and other board members acknowledged, during a December hearing before U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks on the constitutionality of the board's secret clemency process, that they routinely spend as little as a few hours reviewing clemency petitions before they fax in their votes granting or denying clemency.
Two delegations of diplomats and death penalty opponents from Canada (which abolished capital punishment in 1976) visited Rodriguez to plead for mercy for Faulder. The first group, which met with Rodriguez in December, was unceremoniously ejected from his office. The second group, which included a member of Parliament and several anti-death-penalty activists and lawyers, learned 15 minutes into the meeting that their trip to Texas had been futile -- the board had already voted, 18-0, not to recommend clemency in Faulder's case. "We were halfway through the meeting with Rodriguez when he told us" about the board's decision, says Cindy Wasser, a Canadian attorney who attended the meeting. Moreover, says Wasser, "He was extremely curt and refused to tell us the reasons of the board or show evidence of any good-faith review of the materials in the petition for a reprieve."
Although Sparks' ruling in the Faulder lawsuit exonerated the board and its clemency procedures, the judge strongly urged board members to reconsider their policies, which he called "extremely poor and certainly minimal." Several successive court rulings, including one by state District Judge Scott McCown and another by the Supreme Court declining to hear the case, have supported Sparks' reluctant decision. "So in that sense, at least as to fallibility from a legal standpoint, [the procedures] appear to be lawful and constitutional," says Rodriguez, who has staunchly opposed attempts to reform the board's procedures. But the question is sure to linger long past Rodriguez's departure.
The court victories have served as personal vindication for Rodriguez, who says that personal attacks and criticisms of board policies have been the hardest part of his job as parole board chair. "The biggest difficulty for me was not becoming involved in the issue of clemency on a personal level ... and not becoming argumentative," Rodriguez says. "It was very difficult not to respond to questions in anger and not react instinctively ... to keep the focus on the business at hand and keep my emotions out of it. Keeping the personal aspects of it from crossing over into the business aspects has been difficult."
Despite voting in favor of it on countless occasions, Rodriguez says he has no personal bias in favor of the death penalty. "My job is not to be for or against on any of these issues," Rodriguez says. "If I was predisposed [in favor of capital punishment], I couldn't faithfully serve in this position." But death penalty opponents are skeptical of this assertion. "I think he just doesn't want to commit himself," Babcock says. "You can't see people on death row as vulnerable, redeemable human beings and make the kind of decisions he makes on a routine basis."
Rodriguez says his job as parole board chair is no different from any other, despite its heated political aspects. "I can adjust to any situation and any job," he says. "When I first came here, I had no idea what I was getting into, but I came in and I had to learn the ropes very quickly and start managing and changing things. It's been that way all my life."
Blue-Collar Roots
Rodriguez's work ethic runs as deep as his Valley roots. An only child, he was raised by a single mom who held down a variety of jobs in Brownsville, then a relatively booming coastal town. "The job I remember best," he says "was when she worked at a shrimp processing plant, which was very big in South Texas at the time." Though not exactly poor, the family had little money for more than the bare necessities; when he was a kid, Rodriguez says, he had to get milk every morning because he and his mom didn't have a refrigerator to keep it in. For spending money, he took his first job at the age of nine -- delivering copies of the Valley Morning Star, which he picked up from an old jailer at the local prison at 5am. From that job -- his first contact with the criminal justice system -- he moved on to work for a mechanic, a succession of hamburger joints, a grocery store, and, when he graduated high school, the Texas Dept. of Corrections (now the Dept. of Criminal Justice). "Working meant so many different things," Rodriguez says. "It meant money I didn't have [before], it meant getting away from the house. ... It was being able to buy things so the household didn't have to buy them. It meant independence."
After he finished police academy training, Rodriguez took a job as a Huntsville prison guard. When he was 21, the legal age to become a police officer, he returned to Brownsville and joined the force there. Meanwhile, he earned a degree in criminal justice from Pan-American University, working two more jobs to make ends meet. By the time he was 32, Rodriguez was police chief. He met George W. Bush in 1994, when the governor-to-be visited Brownsville during his campaign. And in 1995, he applied for and received an appointment to the parole board, which paid $65,000 at the time. An early-morning riser, Rodriguez started work every day at 6:15am, after a speedy morning commute to Austin from San Antonio, where his wife, Emma, his son, and his two daughters live.
Given Rodriguez's strong work ethic and working-class background, it is somewhat ironic that he has thrown his support so solidly behind the standard-bearer of the East Coast patrician ethos, Gov. Bush. Rodriguez has acknowledged that Bush's presidential run was a factor in his resignation, and says that he has "the highest regard" for the governor as a person and a leader. "I have found him to be very honorable, straightforward, and admirable," he says. "He speaks his mind on things, and I value that highly." (When Rodriguez announced his resignation, Bush issued a similarly glowing statement about the parole board chief.) But Rodriguez declines to classify himself as Republican or Democrat, describing former Gov. Ann Richards as "equally impressive" as Bush.
Despite Rodriguez's often-intransigent position on the board's controversial clemency procedures, the chairman has implemented a few genuinely progressive reforms. Among the changes made during his tenure, one that is sure to have far-reaching effects is an innovative program tying parole to rehabilitation. The program will eventually make all votes for parole contingent on an inmate's rehabilitation; for those who need them, Rodriguez says, the rehab programs will be "all-inclusive" -- not just for junkies and alcoholics, but for people who lack other real-life skills, "like just knowing how to fill out an employment application, for example, or knowing how to do an interview," Rodriguez says. "There's nothing we can do about people who don't want to be helped, but we figured that there would be a large number of people who wanted to help themselves but didn't know how, and we're finding out that that is the case."
No Pushover
Not surprisingly, however, Rodriguez is no bleeding heart when it comes to parole. Under his leadership, the board is credited with reducing the parole rate from a historic high of around 80% -- a rate that fellow parole board member Garrett admits was "an inflated figure" due to the lack of prison space in the 1980s -- to about 18%, a level which Rodriguez calls a vast improvement. "We cannot allow things ever to go to the scenario we faced in 1989, 1990, 1991, where we had to keep building more prisons," Rodriguez says. "We didn't have the prison space, and if we brought in 150 new prisoners, we had to let another 150 people out the back door. We owe it to the state of Texas not to revisit those days again." Many critics, on the other hand, say that the building spree of the 1980s has led to a situation which may be keeping nonviolent criminals in jail longer than their actions justify.
Another, more draconian, reform shackles violent criminals to electronic ankle monitors upon their release on parole. Under the program, a parolee must submit an exact itinerary of his or her daily activities; the slightest deviation from the plan is grounds for arrest and possible parole revocation. At the time of its implementation, Rodriguez called it "the most effective program" for reducing recidivism -- the rate at which former inmates return to prison -- and ensuring rehabilitation.
On other political matters, Rodriguez hesitates to take a position. In the recently completed legislative session, he testified in numerous committee hearings on proposals to change the board's procedures but shied away from discussing related matters, including a proposal to implement life without parole and an "informed jury" bill (approved by the Legislature) which will allow defense attorneys to inform juries that, in Texas, "life imprisonment" means a minimum of 40 years. Previously, defense lawyers were forbidden to impart this information, allowing prosecutors to capitalize on jurors' ignorance in order to win death sentences in capital cases. In general, Rodriguez says, he has no qualms with the informed jury proposal. He is unconvinced, however, that it will make much difference in stemming the tide of death sentences meted out by Texas juries. "I think juries will do what is appropriate in every case," Rodriguez says. "These things may or may not affect it. I don't think so. People will do what they feel they ought to at that moment in time."
Other changes are in store for the parole board, not the least of which is a new proposal -- adopted by the parole board's rule-making policy board -- to allow death row inmates one face-to-face meeting with a parole board member before an execution. Other changes, however, will take longer. Garrett, the newly appointed parole board leader, says his style will be slower, more considered, than Rodriguez's full-throttle management style. "We will probably move a bit slower in some areas than we have as I go about talking to people before I start up with policy making," Garrett says. "There probably will be more discussion, more input from various sources, before moving forward."
Although Garrett says he wants to avoid "dramatic changes" to the embattled clemency process, death penalty lawyers like Babcock are cautiously optimistic about his upcoming tenure. "I think that thoughtfulness is a really important quality for people to have when they have so much power over people's lives," Babcock says. "If they just would give some serious thought and consideration to these people's lives and all of the reasons that warrant clemency, maybe we would see some things start to change."
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