Clemency and Death
Lucas's supposed confidant, Ottis Toole, died on September 15, 1996, from cirrhosis of the liver. He was serving six life sentences in a Florida prison. In 1998, the Texas Board of Pardon and Parole voted to commute Lucas's death sentence to life imprisonment, in accordance with Governor George W. Bush's request. It remains one of only two successful commutations of a death sentence in Texas since the restoration of the death penalty after Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, the other being Kenneth Foster in 2007 who was controversially convicted under Texas' law of parties statute. On March 13, 2001, Lucas died in prison from heart failure at age 64.
Read more about this topic: Henry Lee Lucas
Famous quotes containing the words clemency and/or death:
“That clemency which the world cries up for such a mighty virtue proceeds sometimes from ostentation, sometimes from laziness and neglect, very often from fear, almost always from a mixture of all these together.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)