nEws Addition; News Addition Segments, updub edit master 14

It's almost dinner time at the Casa Juan Diego in Matamordas, Mexico. Every night between 30 and 60 Central Americans take refuge here. They are fleeing civil wars and forced recruitment by governments and guerrillas, and they are fleeing the poverty and destruction that war brings. Denora Racinas is cooking for her fellow travelers tonight. She says that thanks to God, nobody in her family has been kidnapped or tortured or assassinated, but it's very dangerous for young people to walk in the streets because they're both sides in the war recruiting.

She's tired and scared and excited. Only the shallow, real-grandriver lies between her and the land of her dreams. She said that it's very important that you keep your spirits high because if you lose your spirits in your dreams, then you don't have anything left. They've got this big picture in her mind about how glorious it is over here, and a lot of them are really disappointed once they get here. They come for economic reasons, and they think they can find work and make money in the United States. You can see most of them are still down there, just waiting for them to get dark later on today, and that's when they will cross. The government believes the Central Americans are economic migrants filing frivolous asylum claims. It's our job to maintain the integrity of the border, and in the past seven or eight months, we've had between 50 and 60,000 Central Americans that have passed through this area going to all parts of the United States.

Before the immigration and naturalization service, or IONS, allowed refugees seeking asylum to travel on to other parts of the country, where friends and family were often waiting to help. But some refugees did not continue the legal process. This was a problem for the IONS. Probably maybe only 70 of them were actually going in the office. The other 30 were just integrating into our society in kind of a sub-culture status. While the IONS began restricting refugees to the Rio Grande Valley for asylum proceedings, South Texas, already one of the poorest areas in the United States, was further burdened with homeless refugees. And many of the people in the valley just flat resent that. They have not invited these people, but they are here and their needs have to be met. And over a period of time, their goodwill has been rubbed a bit thin. Bill Hughes is a Methodist minister.

He's on the boards of several agencies that do refugee work. In January and early February, we had a cold snap here in the valley that got down in the low 30s. And we probably had 7,000 or more homeless refugees here in Cameron County. This is when it made the TV, national wise, et cetera, and drew a lot of public attention at that point. By February 1989, local outrage and national attention pushed the IONS to find yet another way to stop the flood of refugees. The government's solution, speed up the asylum process, and incarcerate asylum applicants in detention centers. And part of the things that we do for them is part of improcessing them into the facility. Number one, we'll pick up their clothing.

We'll issue them a two-piece uniform. The Port Isabel, or Bayview Processing Center, is the largest IONS facility in South Texas. The refugees call it the Coralone, the Coral. Bayview is a converted military base for administrative detention of people that have violated our immigration laws. It's been very interesting. It's been kind of difficult to deal with, to try to deal with the people humanely to make sure that, you know, they're just administrative violators, they're not criminals. There are two-piece uniforms that is a color that was designated by the immigration service. And in the event of the escape or abscond from our custody, that color will show up in the middle of the night. The Coralone can hold up to 5,000 single male and female refugees. When a population was pretty high, we were able to use some of the tents and keep them

out there. I know that a population is kind of low. We're able to keep everyone other cover-building. The Coralone is just part of the overall IONS plan to discourage Central Americans from coming to the United States. Five hundred federal employees were temporarily transferred to South Texas to arrest, imprisoned, and judge the asylum cases of Central Americans. In all, the IONS operates or contracts for five facilities in the valley. The massive program will cost the government nearly $50 million more this year in South Texas than was budgeted. The IONS at that point was confiscating any legal materials that refugees had on how to exercise their rights. Hopefully, that's not happening anymore. There have been news reports that refugees were being treated unfairly in the detention centers. So in April, a group of professionals from Dallas, made it mostly of doctors, lawyers, and clergy, went to investigate for themselves.

I think the less confrontational you are, the more information you're going to get. And if you put people in the defensive right away, you're not going to get information. Attorney Vicki Stifter guided the valley watch group in South Texas. She works for Preyecto Aguilante in Dallas, providing free legal aid to refugees. Hi, we're here for a tour. There's actually, there's a group, it's a attorney in clergy's from Dallas. I would set it up with Mr. Sewell's office. Okay, I'm going to give you a permit to go to building one. Okay. The Rio Grande Valley Watch Committee will write a report on its findings. The detention center was tidier, neater than I thought it would be. But it was more of a jail than I thought it would be. I just didn't expect double fences and heavy barbed wire. I didn't expect to see people like inmates wearing all the same coveralls. I mean, that had all the look of a jail about it, and I didn't like that.

We also provide them with a library. In the library we have manual typewriters, we provide them with pencil, papers and envelopes. If they can pay for the stamp, they're welcome to pay for it. If they cannot afford to pay for the stamp, we pay for the stamp to notify the loved ones that they're being detained. Also in the library they've got three cellular phones. One of the primary concerns of attorneys was that people were not, attorneys were not able to gain access to their clients, and it was that straightforward. When I was here a few weeks ago interviewing people, there were many people who said that they hadn't had a shower in eight days or ten days, and they hadn't had a phone call for three or four weeks or hadn't been able to make a phone call for three or four weeks. And basically their family didn't know where they were, they didn't have legal representation. They were virtually cut off from the rest of the world. Another thing that we want to provide for them is the forms in which they need to enter for the court case.

They have the right to appeal their case. The INS is under court order now to make sure Salvadorans applying for asylum are told of their rights. The case originated in California and is called the Arante's decision. This new policy, of course, reportedly has, and we've had a number of reports although we're still doing a lot of investigation, flies in the face of Arante's. There have been a number of violations such that the judge on Friday issued a brand new temporary restraining order. That order forces officials in South Texas to tell Salvadorans of their rights, but officials are not allowing other Central Americans to attend the orientations for Salvadorans. It seems to me to not only be unintelligent as a matter of litigation strategy from the INS's perspective and a matter of bad public relations, but it's inhumane. Why should they limit just because the letter of the law allows them to, their orientation to Salvadorans, when in fact all we're asking them to give these people is information about what their legal rights are?

Well, you know, anytime there's a court order, we're going to obey the court order and we do. I haven't, in my experience, seen anything other than the threat of lawsuits or lawsuits that has caused them to improve conditions for people who are being detained. Here at this facility we have a lot of different types of jobs and there's always an overabundance of volunteers. One of the things that we do for them, we provide them, we've been providing them with caps. In addition to that, they're allowed to be given a dollar a day. When we went to the court alone yesterday, the INS detention facility at Port Isabel, anyone of us of our team who happened to mention that they were an abogato or could speak a little Spanish was immediately besieged by tons of people yearning for information. There's a desperate need there to answer their questions about what their rights are. There are only seven immigration attorneys right now in this part of the country, only two of which do straight, pro bono work.

Attorney Mark Schneider works for Proyecto Libertad in the Rio Grande Valley. Proyecto provides free legal help to Central American refugees. We're here in this particular place because this is where refugees are crossing into the United States and they're in the isolated detention center which is 30 miles from Harlingen 30 miles from Brownsville, it's in the middle of a bird refuge which is funny because the birds get a refuge and the refugees get a prison. One of the things that we like to do for them and they really like is the fact that we provide them with aerobics classes. If you participate in the aerobics classes, you will be provided with uniform and twice a week we have a nun that comes out here and she provides them with aerobics classes. This is the Red Cross Center for Refugees in Brownsville, a lot of the Central American DSL comes straight here. The American Red Cross' work in South Texas is one of the most controversial aspects of

the new detention process. The Red Cross turns in refugees when they come to the Red Cross for help. That's because the Criminal Justice Department of the Federal Government pays the Red Cross up to $3 million a year to detain Central American refugees in two valley facilities. Originally, basically what happened is the local volunteer groups in the Brownsville area were sheltering the refugees but the numbers got beyond their capacity to assist them. The Red Cross was called in to see if we could do something. The Red Cross has been a blessing in that they have been able to provide a means for the people to receive food and clothing and shelter. In dealing with that, I'm very, very grateful point. I'm uncomfortable with the partnership to a degree that this is all being paid for by the Federal Government.

Our job is to take care of the people. Single refugees are sent to the Coralone. The refugees traveling with families go to the Red Cross. Although maybe someone would consider this a detention center and I've seen that term to use, it really is a shelter and just to stress the point that the people are free to come and go. Well, it is a detention center. It's certainly that the people have to be there. They're on the rolls. They have to report back in. There's no question that they're doing a humanitarian work. Put it on the other hand. Why couldn't the government just go ahead and put something in there? Why did they have to call on the Red Cross? We want to go out. We take the name down. Check them out. They went out. Okay. When they come in, check them in. Okay. But so no one has ever signed out but just not come back after they signed out? No. They've come back. Well, they're getting trouble though.

They're getting grateful or something. They get caught. For sure they get caught. Then they'll bring them back over here and then say, well, Martina Soto, she's here. She isn't here. So, you know, we're getting trouble. So the immigration will come and say, we're the first in sign out, we're the second in sign out. Yeah, that's right. So no more? Medical security family. Thank you. Parc del Guatamala. Glenn Shelley is an American who works for the Overground Railroad. The railroad tries to help Central American refugees get citizenship in Canada. One of Shelley's clients found out the hard way about how the Red Cross works in South Texas. And when he presented himself there, the INS picked him up and took him to prison and I asked, you know, what did you expect when you showed up at the Red Cross and his answer as well? I shouldn't expect this. You know, he said in Mipais, La Cruz Raja, Zalca, Cabrinda Yuda, in my country, the Red Cross is something that provides help. The Red Cross shelter is just to take care of people while they're in the process, this process of trying to enter the United States by some means.

It was not set up to be a safe haven or something like that. Have to keep in mind that he violated federal law when he swam across the river and came in illegally. I don't know, it's going to be tough for the Red Cross to live this one down. It makes me now want to give blood to them anymore. When they blindfolded him, and he felt that way. They were trying to recruit them to be in the military. They came in a truck, a banana truck underneath with the bananas in the back of it. But he was able to escape into the brush. The odds are against these refugees getting asylum. 80% of them will go unrepresented in a system they don't understand. Their claim will be heard, but most won't be allowed to stay. If you talk about legality and you talk about justice, what they're doing is legal, whether

it is just or not is a whole different question. Even if the refugees are lucky enough to have an immigration attorney represent them in this remote corner of Texas, only 3 to 5% will be granted asylum. And the reason for that is that we do an in-depth interview of a person who's claiming political asylum in the United States. The person has to show us that he or she will be persecuted because of their race, religion, political opinion, membership in a particular social group, these kind of things. The trauma that a lot of these people have been through in getting to the United States physically, mentally and spiritually depleted, it's not the kind of thing that you can expect to have in spill their guts in 20 minutes in an interview with an INS officer in no attorney. The numbers are different in San Francisco, where translators and lawyers work together

to overcome the refugee's fear of authority. Jewish and approval rates shoot up to almost 70% of Salvadoran claims in particular granted versus the nationwide rate of 3%. There are some that are fleeing real persecution in their countries. But the majority of them are coming here for economic well-being. That's a lie. As one of our folks pointed out, only 105 came from Costa Rica, which is a country at least. But it's also a poor country. So why didn't more come from Costa Rica if it was purely for economic reasons? And despite the fact that our refugee laws are supposed to be politically neutral, that a Russian ballerina is not supposed to get better treatment than a Salvadoran peasant, a lot of these folks from Central America just are not getting a fair shake. Mark Schneider and Proyecto Libertad have won only 15 asylum cases.

During the eight years, they've been helping Central Americans in the valley. A lot of times, I think, we have these legal procedures that mask a raid as justice, because you have judges, and you have lawyers, and you have translators. And people make the usual motions, and make the usual orders, and the usual objections. But beneath it all, you may not always get a fair shake. A lot of times, the decision is made before you ever step in there. We're not harsh in our evaluation, but the person is going to have to say and convince us a little bit that they will be persecuted before we grant the application. It's a fair process. About 2,000 refugees have been sent back since the INS began detaining Central Americans in South Texas, and speeding up their asylum claims. One has to believe there have been many miscarriages of justice that people should have gotten

asylum in this country who didn't. Okay, Smoltao coming up, hotel economical, is one used by smugglers, bringing in large numbers of Central Americans, and they have them here in big groups until they can arrange to get on furthermore. The real question that you have is why are the people still coming? And the reason that the immigration naturalization service says is they are still coming before economic reasons. Oh, that's baloney. And it seems to me that the issue of whether these individuals are economic or political refugees should be subsumed in the larger issue, which is our foreign policy toward Central America. And I think we've waged to foreign policy in recent years, and one way or another, has played a very important role in bringing great deal economic distress to the countries

of Central America. They don't realize that as long as those push factors are there, refugees will continue to come, and immigrants who choose to come to the U.S. voluntarily will also continue to come, but you can screen those people out. You're never going to stop people fleeing persecution, because even if we incarcerate them, even if we deprive them of human dignity, the conditions will still be better than in their home countries, where they fear far greater violations of dignity or loss of life. The Salvadorans coming from a country that's lost 70,000 people in the last eight years, trying to get into our frontier and trying to evade persecution in their homelands, are treated as economic refugees for reasons of foreign policy. That is, we give $2 million a day to the government of El Salvador, and if someone is fleeing that regime in one way or another, it's incompatible with our policy. I don't, you know, debate foreign policy. That's for others that are better informed than I, you know, at the Washington level to

do. But groups here in the Rio Grande Valley have said because there's perhaps some guerrilla activity in one part of El Salvador that we should let everybody from El Salvador that wants to come in, come in. I disagree with that. It would be so much better off if, instead of sending $27 million down to our countries, if we just brought them all up here to Texas A&M for a two-year course in a variety of skills, and they would be a blessing such a godsend to the people of Central America as opposed to teaching them how to blow somebody's head off. And the analogy is, you know, we're neighbors in two houses, and people say, well, my neighbor couldn't get a job, so he comes bother to me in my own backyard. Why is he coming here?

Well, the reason is, is because we've been planting bombs in his backyard. He hasn't been able to plow his fields because of the war. He hasn't been able to get work because we've mined his harbors. He hasn't been able, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And when he comes here, because we've destroyed his country, it's crazy for us to say, well, that's economic, go back to your country. We need to change what we're doing there, but it's what we are doing there. It's not what the government is doing because the government is you and me and everybody who's watching this. We are the government. We are the people. This is our country. And we need to own what we are doing, and if we're happy with owning it, so be it. If we're unhappy with owning it, and I would hope more of us would be, we need to change it and to keep working for that change. I almost feel like I don't want to describe to them actually what awaits them on the other

side because they may end up in a prison or a shelter or a detention facility or whatever the name is, it's not going to be what they were looking for. She said that she knows that it will be difficult, that one always has to suffer, but after the suffering is when the joy comes. This unique stretch of woods along Spring Creek in Garland is more like an Amazon rainforest

than a typical Texas woodland. It's filled with giant hardwoods 500 years old. At one time, urban development threatened Spring Creek Forest, so the Parks and Recreation Department has formed a volunteer group to protect the region. We would like to see the forest used for the educational benefit of the public. We want them to take charge of all the maintenance and operations of the forest. We want them to take charge of any research that's done at the forest. We also want them to take charge of any development. A group is called the Spring Creek Forest Preservation Society. His chairman is former City Councilman Gary McVey. He says there will have to be some development within the forest itself. We want to be more than just open to the public.

We want to be able to publicize the fact that we're here. We'll have facilities for, you know, taking care of the whole day, because that forest you can't do in an hour or an hour and a half, you know, restroom facilities, comfort facilities, the Interruptive Center. Of course, we'll have to have some kind of a parking lot I would imagine at some time. In this type of segment. Those plans have angered Bobby Scott, the man who discovered this forest in 1977. This self-taught naturalist is a member of the group's executive board. We don't want to treat this area like a typical park. That would utterly destroy the wild and wilderness atmosphere that is the very essence of what we're trying to protect. For years, Scott kept this forest a secret. I thought the area would be safer if nobody knew anything about it. I didn't want, you know, you tell the city and they make a park out of something. They tend to destroy it as much as save it, so I didn't want that to be the fate of this place. I wanted it to remain pure. We do have people to keep it. And now Scott's fight is over how to best protect the forest since its adoption by the

preservation society. The group is only a few months old and has little money to care about its development plans. At least for a while, development won't come to this pristine woodland. I'm Dana Dalberville. These writings appeared in the first edition of Endeavor, live voices from death row. The first dramatic reading is from an article by Gary Graham, death row number 696.

Let us use this voice to show the public that we have some redeeming qualities after all, so we are not the monsters we have been made out to be the mass media, but that we are sensitive human beings just like them with the capacity to be creative, loving, compassionate and understanding. James Bethard, number 785. These two guards have been on duty during Franklin's execution. They spoke of the state of the corpse in disgusting ways, even laughing about watching another of the guards placing Franklin's hands into grating positions. We all have been kicking this around for a long time. It was mainly just something to do at first. We wanted to have a project, you know, something to get us all together, occupied, get away from the TVs, you know.

The paper is just personal stories, you know, people that were involved with the system. They really know what's going on in the system to point it out just to show what's going on. This newsletter gives us a chance to show who and what we are to the people on the outside. To show those people out there that we're just like them, you know, even though we've been convicted of a crime, you know, it doesn't necessarily follow that we're worthless, you know, and don't have some to offer society. But you know, people out there will be saying, but you're not just like me, you're on death row, and I'm not, and I didn't do anything to get on death row. Well, and to that, I would probably, what's different about you? I mean, you were born with a mother, we're all, you know, we all have the same heritage, so to speak, we're all human beings, you know. These words were written by Robert West, number 731. Admit that what you really want is revenge and quit calling it justice, because true justice isn't supposed to murder or make more victims. Gary Graham, number 696.

It should be made clear that we are not advocating the breakdown of prisons or any counter-destructive behavior. No, we are after something a little more radical than that, like the transformation of our prisons into centers of light and love. Schools were united. We can help each other learn to be more productive members of society. Larry Robinson, number 748. Electronic babysitters that dole my mind flash little slices of American dream across the window of a TV screen. The carrot dangles just outside my bars, images of hot sex, dope and fast cars, excitement and money, all fools gold, fire to stoke the furnace of carnal desire, and glamorize the folly that brought me here. We all got these articles, and I started laying them out, you know, word, you know, letter by letter, you know, and bobbing them, typed them up, and after they got all the articles

typed up, I sat down and I decided which ones, you know, we're going to, you know, fit wear and paper. The language of the system is harsh and is cruel and it's nasty and is vulgar. We want it to be able to speak the language that the system teaches us on editing, you know, uncensored, uncut, have our voices pure, clean. The only way we can get information, you know, to each other is if we're on the same run, and we got a hole underneath the door, and we take a container and put messages and slide down the hall, and they get their sick and they stop it, you know. Are we holler down, you know, if it's just a short message? Me personally, and among a lot of the people involved, I've seen it as an empowering thing. You know, I mean, this is prison, and this is probably a hell of a thing to be saying, but there's a lot of good in here because there's people in here, wherever there's people, there's good, and everybody's got good in them, and you can bring it out.

We need that here, we need people to be alive instead of being dead. And I will try to make amends for whatever I've done in my past by sharing, you know, my experiences with people, you know, now through this, you know, form, you know. That's, you know, one thing we hope to do, another thing we hope to do is get all the guys together here on death row and unify them in a spirit of solidarity. James Bethard, number 785. A third guard, a younger one, came and joined the conversation, lamenting the fact that he had not been one of the lucky ones who'd seen the body or any of the past executions. The older of the three assured the lad that there were plenty of executions coming up and that he'd see to it that the boy got to see at least one of them. At that, the other guard pointed out that the guy in the van, me, was from death row. The young guard seemed excited and asked if there was going to be another party tonight.

He was visibly disappointed when told that I was only passing through on my way to the medical unit and not there to die. Co-executive editor of the endeavor, Robert West, has been on death row six and a half years. He was convicted of killing a Houston waitress. Co-executive editor Gary Graham was convicted of robbing and killing a man outside of Houston supermarket. He's lived on death row for nearly nine years. The editor, Larry Robinson, has been on death row six years. Robison was convicted of killing a man at Lake Worth and an incident where five bodies were discovered at a lakeside cottage. James Bethard was convicted along with Jean Hathorn of killing three members of Hathorn's family for the insurance money. Bethard has lived on death row three and a half years. It's nothing like a regular prison environment is like this is my third different penitentiary system, my third different state, and I've never seen nothing like this before. This is like a meat locker.

They bring them in. The front door opens up. They die coming into the cell block and they're hanging around in the cells waiting to be buried. We do want to encourage everybody on death row to get involved because it's not just we don't want to be the Bobby West, Larry Robinson, Gary Graham News, Larry, we want to be the death row newsletter and we don't want to stop there even. We want to encourage all the men on death row across the United States to get involved in something like this, you know, because we've got this many people here who have this kind of power to bring something about like that, let me just think, you know. What other kind of town is there lying waste in some other warehouse somewhere else, you know? It's it's infinitely successful just because it got put together and ran one issue. For continuous success, it's going to take feedback from the outside, it's going to take the actual communication, the two way communication, even if they don't respond to us in writing or something. If people read it and understand, that's the success involved and that's all I could ask

you. Working by moral convictions, Dallas City Council member Diane Reichsdale makes waves at City Hall, like the time she cited with people protesting a plan to change the makeup of the city council. Just melt a mail as stated, I am now moving. Melt a mail as stated that the citizens of this city should have the right to borrow this issue. We have to foreshare it because because greed and selfishness tends to prevail when People are already in power. People are already in power.

This is part of freedom for me. It brings out the best of me, I guess. I like drawing things that are free.

This is excellent to have a nice and dark on the outside. I think the main goal or the main reason behind art education is that the individuals themselves promote it. People have to have art. They have to be creative. And it's a need. It's a very deep need in every person. And I think that when the inmate finds himself in here with a tremendous amount of time on his hands, that need becomes apparent and becomes almost overwhelming. You can't stop these people from being creative. This painting is about innocence. It's a series that I'm doing, exploring that quality that I feel is lacking in America today. It's something I personally feel, which I'm personally trying to get in touch with.

Otherwise, the art really would have no meaning. This work also offers a release for being cramped up when I start working on a painting. Time dissolves. Here on this, you and I have established myself as a portrait artist. Most of the pain you see I'm commissioned to do. Like this photograph here, a person would just normally tell me if they want their cell phone in it, I want to be all from it, or superimposed on something else. Basically, just give me an idea of what they want. And I'll work from this and try to come up with something like a half here. It makes me feel important that I'm playing a little part in this world. This lets me feel good about myself.

It's helping me, I feel, to come to grips with what I have been and what I am and what I need to do if I'm going to live in that world outside. This right here, painting helps take me away from my past. It helps me when I paint it, I'm looking forward, I'm not looking back. And it helps me to deal with what I've got to deal with here, mainly watching here. It helps me formulate a hopefully a plan that will help keep me out of this prison the next time I get out. I was touched by many things that I saw when I went with you to the Dallas County jail, and I could perhaps summarize it best this way that life is about making life meaningful. And either we create meaning as an art, or we create symptoms in our sufferings, as neurotic patients do, or we create trouble. So, I am impressed with the effort of these inmates to go from the route that has brought them into prison.

If I use this as a kind of pun of being a troublemaker, the effort to become a maker of meaning, a maker of art. When we do most of the inmates, we kind of improvise as far as the material that we use, because we're only allowed a few personal possessions. Now, what I use for my portraits, I use a pencil for sketching, I ink in sometimes, and to add some color to it, we usually purchase candy. It's plain only among them candy from the commissary. And the colors being artificial, they are easily taken off of the candy, and made into a liquid form, which we improvise and use and match them, chipage and the match, and use it for a brush.

And that's how we apply the color to our paintings. Like I can take the maker of materials that are about me and I can create something visible and beautiful. Every sheriff has a commissary in their jail. I have a commissary that makes a profit, and the profit goes to the art programs and a few other things that we do for the inmates here in America. And as long as I use it to benefit the inmates, then I'm left completely alone with it, and my commissary fund furnishes the art program. Two or three times a year, they have a show where they sell their art. That money can go to the inmate account, and that gives him more money to buy from the commissary to make more profit to buy supplies and to keep the programs going that we have for them. And it certainly gives them things to do other than try to figure out how to break out or to cause a problem with my detention officers.

As a lot less fighting, a lot less problems. Since we've started this jail in this art program here, we've had very little trouble that other places seem to have constant problems. We've had very little or none. I would advise any county official to look very closely at this type of program. Once you can get beyond the image or the thought that this is sort of coddling prisoners, and think from the other standpoint that in fact you are helping yourself as managers in managing that facility properly, and in the long run, saving the taxpayer's money by what you can reduce and damages, intention, and everything else. I think that you will find it economically advantageous to look very closely at such a program. We've had very little trouble that other places seem to have a lot of problems.

We've had very little trouble that other places seem to have a lot of problems. The death house in Huntsville is a small brick building tucked inside the Texas Department of Corrections. 31 men have received lethal injections here since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. 302 men and 4 women are on death row awaiting execution. Many of them don't have lawyers.

Texas lawyers are the most, they're all about the money, no money, no go. Jim Vanderbilt and Jerry Lee Hogue do have lawyers now, but there was a time when they filed their own legal papers. I had no other choice. Either I was to file for re-hearing myself or it wasn't going to be filed in period. Texas has a death row that's larger than any other death row in the country. It has no state-funded system for providing attorneys for persons on death row. Once their case has been tried and appealed to the first stage of the appeal. Two years ago, Robert McGlasson began looking for lawyers who would prepare death row appeals for free. The situation was that one judge after another began to receive pro-say petitions from persons on death row.

By that I mean these are papers, legal documents that normally should be written by a lawyer that were actually being written by the individuals on death row themselves. You are Johnny Frank Garrett. You are charged with the events of capital murder. Texas does provide free trial lawyers for capital murder defendants who can't afford one. But the state's help ends when a conviction is upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and then made his own, if he wants to take his case to the US Supreme Court, or wants a second round of appeals after that. 60 to 70 percent of all death sentences nationwide are overturned in the federal courts by judges like Carolyn King in Houston. We did not find ourselves in a situation where the case actually before the court of appeals and the lawyer not being a lawyer. There were lawyers but the problem was that we could see that just by virtue of sheer numbers we were going to have a lot of cases coming and we weren't sure where the lawyers were going to come from. A few criminal defense lawyers were donating time to appeal the cases they lost to trial. The prison had a small staff of lawyers to handle some cases too.

But death row was growing quickly that it will appeals judges approved a $900,000 grant from a glassens project. Our project is funded to try to find lawyers number one for these people and then to work with these attorneys to train them, to teach them and to actually act as co-counts. We act as co-counsel with them to represent these individuals. We put our effort into it because there was a need and at the time there wasn't anyone filling it. We couldn't stand by and do nothing. The call for help came last September in the state bar magazine. Then President of the bar, James Sales of Houston, was scolded the 51,000 lawyers in Texas and called the situation offensive and embarrassing. Maclasen laid the blame on the legislature. You know, I don't think the state is too ashamed of the situation and they never were and I think that was part of the problem. 14 of the 36 death penalty states have state-funded offices for prisoner appeals. Maclasen, a Texas native, worked in the Georgia clinic before moving to Austin.

His staff asks civil law firms with more than 20 lawyers to take on a death row case. The answer is often no. It is an enormous responsibility. Unlike any other responsibility that any other professional I dare say has and it's not unusual and it's certainly not surprising to me that it's not just the easiest thing in the world to find people willing to do this. Daryl Jordan is the current president of the state bar with 144 lawyers. His Dallas firm Hughes and Lewis is one of the largest in Texas. It does not represent any death row inmates. You're talking about a time commitment in many cases of upwards of 2,000 hours annually. That's almost a full year in a professional's life. And to expect that many people are going to be in a position to donate that time. Without any reimbursement even for out-of-pocket costs, I think is unreasonable.

65 civil law firms have answered the call for help. Many of the lawyers are from other states, attorneys like Doug Robinson, who has been shuttling this month from Washington DC to El Paso. Inmates are happy to see the help. You have to understand that the kinds of attorneys we're getting now come from very large law firms. And these are people that were in the top two or three percent of their law school at Harvard. These are very smart people. A lot of lawyers in the last two years have done this because the Texas lawyers wouldn't do it. A lot of lawyers from New York, and Morrison, Colorado, Arizona are coming in on these cases. The out-of-state lawyers have sparked national headlines about the situation in Texas. They've also made life difficult for Bob Walt. He oversees capital murder prosecution at the Attorney General's office in Austin.

We used to have the people who were trained in criminal law, trained in criminal procedure, handling these cases, handling them well, and representing these inmates. The clinic came in and said that they'd take the cases over and would find a voluntary counsel. And at that point, they were going to the newspapers and saying, we can't find any attorneys. These people are unrepresented. There's a crisis in Texas. The Attorney General takes over for local prosecutors during the final stages of death penalty appeals. His office is complaining to judges about the legal tactics used by McGlasson. One of the tools of defense counsel in these in-depth penalty cases is to engage in Del and Delay, because the lobby Delay, you in essence, have a de facto life sentence. So is that what the center has been trying to do, do you think? We certainly have indications that, in fact, they have gone out of their way not to obtain attorneys until after execution dates are set. My understanding is they've gotten themselves a pretty bad reputation now, and that a lot of attorneys don't want to get involved in them.

Our existence, the fact that we have come and we are doing what we're doing, is creating a problem for the Attorney General's office, yes. Now they're going to have to respond to real lawyering with real attorneys who are providing competent representation, and it's going to be more work for them. I don't see that the Resource Center as a general rule has been anything other than constructive, and I think they're doing their dead level best. McGlassons Resource Center and the Attorney General's office have asked the courts to rethink the rules for appeals. It's an urgent request, because Texas Jury's are sentencing a new person to death every 15 days. The problem in Texas is that unlike any place in the country, Texas tends to use, the state trial judges tend to use warrants, dates of execution, as a means of essentially forcing lawyers to do something. A file pleading at a given point or whatever.

And yet we don't see any recruitment, actual efforts to recruit attorneys until after the execution dates are sent. That seems to be our problem. That's what we're hoping the judge came. We'll address. We don't expect the execution to go through, but it is the only procedure that we know of to get these proceedings moving. It's the order of judgment in the criteria of the court that you'd be sentenced to execution. This system of last minute legal work is like a game of chicken, according to one federal judge. 11-th hour reprieves are common. One inmate got a stay of execution just minutes before he was scheduled to die. At time we get the case. We're not looking at 30 days. We're looking, we may be looking at only hours. And what you have to do is you have to be in a position to be sure that you understand what the issues are and to assess them fairly and that you can't do that. Judges and lawyers will meet later this month to decide if the system should change. We're not going to be able to recruit as many people as we probably will need without

some institutional changes, either a public defender system or some sort of a system wherein the courts can appoint lawyers and pay those lawyers for their time. The legal situation on death row is better now, but some inmates are still representing themselves. There are about three or four inmates that seriously look at legal work and we stay busy filing paperwork for other people or helping them file paperwork for themselves. Jim Vanderbilt's death sentence has been overturned twice. He's a former police officer accused of kidnapping and shooting a state senator's teenage daughter in Amarillo. He's awaiting a third trial. Jerry Lee Hogue was convicted of raping an Arlington woman and killing her by setting her home on fire. His case is on appeal in federal court. You are hampered here by this law library and, you know, Texas isn't only going to spend

so much money on their books. In Dallas, Darryl Jordan says his law firm will consider accepting its first death row case this fall. We got to have some help and we need it quickly or else, unfortunately, somebody is going to go to their execution needing a lawyer and but without perhaps a lawyer. We're doing everything we can to see that that doesn't happen, but I'm not sure how long we can keep that from happening. Jim Vanderbilt's death sentence has been overturned twice.

Thank you. After years of legal battle, Southwest Airlines won the right to continue using Love Field

as its base. Fort Worth officials in 1979 called on their then-powerful congressman, Jim Wright, to come to the rescue. He did, by attaching an amendment to the Airline D-Regulation Act, the so-called right amendment prohibits carrier serving Love Field from flying directly to cities beyond Texas and its four border states, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. There is a bill in Congress now which would repeal the right amendment and bring unrestricted flights back to Love Field. Those who want to keep the restrictions argue that noise and safety are the major factors for limiting flights. When Southwest first started flying out of Love Field, the Airline had only nine flights a day from the airport. It now has 116 flights per day from Love. Neighbors in the area have complained for years about the noise, and with the airport's proximity to downtown Dallas, there has been increasing concerns about safety.