25 metres from shooting
Dan Glaister writes in the Guardian about Kenneth Foster.

Texas is poised to execute a man for a crime he did not commit. While the perpetrator of the murder in San Antonio was executed last year, Kenneth Foster, who was sitting in a car 25 metres away at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to death under the "law of parties".

The controversial Texas law removes the distinction between the principal actor and accomplice in a crime, and makes a person guilty if they "should have anticipated" the crime.

While a federal appeals court declared that Foster's death sentence contained a "fundamental constitutional defect", a legal anomaly means the state appeals court cannot overturn his conviction, there being no new evidence.
After the failure this month of Foster's most recent appeal, the 30-year-old African-American's final hope of avoiding execution on August 30 rests with an appeal for clemency to the Texas parole board and the Texan governor, Rick Perry.

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