The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Senators Coverdell and Wellstone debate aid for Colombia's drug war, Terence Smith asks about water on Mars, Margaret Warner explores the facts and the issues raised by a death sentence in Texas, and a fifth grader recites her favorite poem. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The execution of Gary Graham was to go ahead as scheduled tonight in Texas. The convicted killer was to die by lethal injection after the state Board of Pardons refused to intervene. It could have recommended that Governor George W. Bush grant a 120-day reprieve, commute the sentence or issue a pardon. The execution had become the focus of a renewed national debate about capital punishment. A spokesman delivered this statement this afternoon for the Pardons Board Chairman:

LARRY FITZGERALD: The members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles are fully aware of the responsibility we have in rendering our votes as part of the executive clemency review process. I can say unequivocally that the Board's decision not to recommend clemency was reached after a complete and unbiased review of the petition and evidence submitted.

JIM LEHRER: Bush's run for the presidency helped attract attention to the case, but state law blocks him from acting unless the Pardons Board makes a recommendation. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. First lady Hillary Clinton will not face charges over her statements about firings at the White House Travel Office. Independent counsel Robert Ray said today he won't prosecute. He said there is substantial evidence Mrs. Clinton played a role in the 1993 incident, despite her denials. He said she had discussions with top White House officials that ultimately influenced the firings. But he said he cannot prove she knowingly gave false information to Congress or federal investigators. Congressional leaders today agreed on funding for Colombia's war on drugs. The total will be $1.3 billion; a compromise between a House bill and a Senate version. President Clinton called it a "huge, huge issue."

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Those people are... They're in the fight of their lives for their very way of life with the combined pressure of a guerilla war that's been going on for decades and the rise of the narco traffickers over the last two decades. And I don't think the average American can imagine what it would be like to live in a country where a third of the country on any given day may be in hands of someone that is an enemy, an adversary of the nation state.

JIM LEHRER: The aid package includes U.S. military equipment, combat helicopters and training for Colombia's army and police. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Secretary of State Albright urged China today to hold reconciliation talks with Taiwan. She made the appeal to Chinese President Jiang during a meeting in Beijing. She said China has more to gain through talks than through intimidation. But Jiang said Taiwan's new President Chen must first acknowledge there is only one China-- something he has thus far refused to do. Israeli Prime Minister Barak saved his governing coalition today. An ultra-orthodox party agreed not to quit the government, but its leaders said they would not promise support for future peace deals with the Palestinians. The coalition crisis began with an unrelated issue involving state funding for religious schools. NASA said today Mars may have had flowing water within the last 1,000 years. That's much more recent than expected, and it improves the chance of finding signs of life. Images from the Mars Global Surveyor showed what appear to be gullies cut in the slopes of asteroid craters. They could indicate torrents of water once burst from the surface. A top official at NASA offered this perspective:

EDWARD WEILER, NASA: They have not found lakes and rivers flowing on Mars; they have not found hot springs sprouting out of Mars. They certainly have not found the hot tobacco with the Martians swimming in it either. But what they have found is some very intriguing possible evidence for water that has flowed on Mars in the geologically recent past.

JIM LEHRER: We will have more on this story later in the program tonight. Also ahead, helping the drug war in Colombia, the graham capital punishment case, and a favorite poem.

FOCUS - WAR ON DRUGS

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman begins our drug report.

KWAME HOLMAN: As part of the Senate's $13.5 billion foreign operations bill, members earmarked nearly a billion dollars to assist the Colombian government in its ongoing war against the country's well-financed cocaine producers. Most of that cocaine is shipped to and consumed in the United States. Majority Leader Trent Lott says that requires the U.S. to respond.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: President Pastrana of Colombia has asked for our help not to solve the problem for him. We're not advocating U.S. troops go in or that we have direct involvement in their efforts there, but to help him to solve it without American troops -- give them the aid they need, give them the equipment they need to fight these massive narcotic drug cartels in Colombia and that part of the world.

KWAME HOLMAN: In recent months, president Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, made several trips to Capitol Hill to press lawmakers to approve the anti- drug money. He argued that as Colombia's cocaine production increased, so did the threat against its democratic institutions.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY (Ret.): Cocaine production in Colombia has gone up 140% in a little less than four years. It is astonishing. We're talking 70% or more of the world total. And that cocaine, we would

argue is the heart an of the incredible impact that 26,000 armed people are having on Colombian democratic institutions. They're wearing shiny, new uniforms. They have more machine guns than the Colombian infantry battalions have. They have planes, helicopters and wiretap equipment and they are assassinating mayors and intimidating journalists and corrupting public officials.

KWAME HOLMAN: During this hearing before a House committee on drug policy, McCaffrey said some of the money would be used to send helicopters to Colombia and to train pilots to fly them.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY (Ret.): And that mobility package, in our view, in the Colombian plan, allows Colombian democratic institutions to regain sovereignty over their own terrain, particularly in the South.

KWAME HOLMAN: Members of the House were convinced, and in March approved money to fight the cocaine war in Colombia as well as in neighboring countries. But during yesterday's debate in the Senate, Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone proposed taking about a quarter of the nearly one billion dollars ticketed for Colombia and redirecting it.

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE, (D) Minnesota: This money instead would say... And this follows up on what general McCaffrey and others have said, which is that we also need to deal not just with interdiction, but also the demand side in this country. And we have to figure out a way to cut down on the demand side in our country, so we will provide money for prevention and treatment programs in this country.

KWAME HOLMAN: In turn, Washington State Republican Slade Gorton called for spending no more than $200 million on Colombian assistance, warning against the direction he said U.S. policy was taking.

SEN. SLADE GORTON, (R) Washington: This is a shift from supporting a police force in a friendly country to supporting an army engaged in a civil war; a civil war that it has not been winning, a civil war in which other side is very financed-- indirectly, at least, in large part by Americans who purchase cocaine-

KWAME HOLMAN: However, both attempts to slice money away from the nearly one billion dollars to assist in the Colombian drug war failed. An overwhelming number of Senators sided with the argument made by Democrat Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD, (D) Connecticut: Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in the conflict in Colombia. Because of events in that country and because of our own habits in this nation, people are dying in the streets of America. This is not some distant conflict without any ramifications here at home.

KWAME HOLMAN: This afternoon, Senators overwhelmingly endorsed spending the nearly one billion dollars to assist in Colombia's drug war. But next week they and their colleagues in the House will be asked to do more by approving $1.3 billion for the Colombian effort -- a compromise worked out by today.

JIM LEHRER: And now to two Senators who see this issue differently: Republican Paul Coverdell of Georgia, and Democrat Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Both are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator Coverdell, President Clinton said today this is a huge, huge issue. Do you agree with that?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL, (R) Georgia: Yes, I do. I think we've witnessed a very significant occurrence in American foreign policy and hemispheric foreign policy, of demand focus in the United States. I was somewhat surprised by the overwhelming margins for which this plan was endorsed. I personally believe that what we're talking about here is the stability of the future of all these new democracies in our hemisphere -- a very significant event in American history.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Wellstone, do you see it in the same terms, that democracy in the hemisphere is at stake here?

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: No. I mean, I think first you have to look at this in terms of what's happening with addiction and drug use in our country. I would argue we ought to be helping the Colombian government. I want to. I think we should help them build democratic institutions, economic development, interdiction, you name it. But some of the money, if we're going to talk about war on drugs, some of the money ought to be for treatment here in our country. I do a lot of work in this area. 80% receive no treatment whatsoever, I don't know why we're not dealing with demand side in our country. That's one issue. The second issue which is it's one thing to be supporting the police. Now we shift to a 7 to 1 ratio in supporting the military to a push in the South. We're becoming involved in a civil war with the military there, with Americans on the ground, a military that every human rights organization, every human rights organization, much less our own State Department, says has a deplorable record when it comes to human rights and all too often is involved with paramilitary organizations that have murdered and assassinated people. That's the question. Do we want to become involved in this kind of a conflict?

JIM LEHRER: Is that what the question is, Senator Coverdell?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: No, of course I admire Senator Wellstone's attempts at treatment, but I would point out in the last eight years treatment budgeting has increased dramatically while interdiction has fallen through the floor, and the result is more drugs are in the United States and they're cheaper. Therefore, in the last eight years, utilization among our children 9 to 12 is virtually doubled. I would argue that the greatest treatment program in the world is to prevent the individual child from getting caught up in it in the first place.

JIM LEHRER: What about his second issue of....

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: I just don't accept... I think the weakest issue the Senator portrays is a military co-opted by radical right. I just don't believe it. I've been there. Many of his colleagues on his side of the aisle have been there; all of these arguments have been aired and have been rejected 80-20, 90-10 in the United States Senate. That is on an issue of this magnitude an overwhelming majority.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Wellstone, what about the point, Senator Coverdell made it, but also Senator Dodd, your Democratic colleague, made it on the floor of the Senate that whether we like it or not is the way Senator Dodd put it, we're involved in that conflict, that civil war?

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: Well, you know, it's interesting. When I heard Senator Dodd say that, I thought to myself in one way, yes, but here's the question. Of course we should be helping President Estrada. I want to. Of course, interdiction to me is you figure out a way of stopping it on the boats, you figure out a way of stopping it on the planes. You're involved in interdiction. You're involved in helping the government there and building democratic institutions. How are you going to end this civil war? Do you think you're going to end it by a military push to the south or do you think you'll help it by a way of figuring out a way of building democracy in that country? My second point is we are involved because we have the whole problem of addiction in our own country - our states tell us on the ground -- maybe 23 million Americans have a problem with substance abuse. Why aren't we getting treatment to people? Paul says the budget has gone up. Paul, my gosh, look at the all reports this year. 80% of adolescents not receiving any treatment whatsoever -- 60% of adults not receiving treatment whatsoever. When Paul says, "I've been there and I just don't believe it" I can just say Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. 70, 80 different non-government organizations, religious community in Colombia saying don't support the military in the drive to the south. That's the issue. Do we want to get involved in a civil war? Do we want Americans on the ground with the Colombia military, a military that has been identified with blatant violation of human rights.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's be specific here, Senator Coverdell. What do you add or subtract from what Senator Wellstone says about the nature of the people who we are supporting?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: You have both used the word civil war. This is no longer a civil war. It may have been in the beginning an ideological, but this is a narco financed insurgency from top to bottom. It's a money machine. They have 3 percent of the Colombian population that would maybe follow it. This is one of the oldest democracies in the hemisphere. It's a very committed people. President Pastrana has been endorsed by all. I just might point out that all these assertions have been rejected by 80 to 90% of the United States Senate after years and months of discussion. It just... I don't think it holds water.

JIM LEHRER: Wait a minute. Hold on, Senator Wellstone. Let me ask Senator Coverdell this question: The issue that Senator Gordon raised and Senator Wellstone, which is, is there a concern at all that... do you share the concern at all that we, the United States, could get over committed here, that there could be... we will eventually have to put troops on the ground because you take one step at least to another, et cetera?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: I think a legitimate part of the debate in worrying, yes, I have concerns about it but my greater concern is that we sit here and cover our eyes and do nothing. I know what the result of that is: A total explosion and destabilization of our democratic hemisphere. Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, the heart of this drug struggle in the hemisphere is in Colombia, and it is spilling over the border - we are moving armies. Panama has no army to defend itself and has thousands of these insurgents wandering around.

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: But, Jim, Paul and I are good friends. But what you just heard, this is now a different argument. If we're going to say this is a war on drugs that's one thing, then we ought to deal with the demand side in our country. What Paul is now saying is Colombia, insurgents, it's all over Latin America. My gosh, this is the "domino theory" all over again. And if we're going to be involved in a military conflict, if we're going to be involved in this push to the South and what this is really about is the military counterinsurgency effort with United States soldiers and others on the ground, people in our country ought to know that; in all due respect to Paul Coverdell who has been honest about it, that's a very different question, and I'm very concerned about it. Again no one has refuted any of these human rights reports. No one can.

JIM LEHRER: Let's stay on the subject of what the dominos. Senator Coverdell, you think if this does not stop now, you're talking about a huge, huge-- to use President Clinton's terms-- a huge, huge happening down there.

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: It already is a huge happening. It's already affecting the policy of Panama, of Ecuador, of Peru and of Bolivia. It's the entire Andean region. This is not a civil war. This is a battle against a group of thugs that are extremely evil, that do not have a population that endorses them. And they have overwhelming wealth and weapons, as the President just said, because of narcotic money.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Wellstone, do you dispute what Senator Coverdell just said in depicting who these people are on the other side, the narco types?

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: I don't dispute that. The paramilitary is identified with the same narco traffic. I'm all for, I said it yesterday, I'm all for a good part of the package especially when it can lead to some resolution of this conflict -- especially when it can lead to police and interdiction and all the rest. I'm not for putting our people on the ground in an effort in this military push into Southern Colombia. I'm certainly not for Paul's argue all the that as goes southern Colombia, align ourselves with the military and paramilitary groups which have been involved in the same narco traffic, if we don't do that, so goes all of south America and all of central America, I think that's a dubious proposition. Again it is naive to believe that we are going to be able to do something about the tragic consequences of substance abuse and addiction in our country unless we invest the resources in the demand side and in treatment programs at the community level. We don't have that. I just wonder why my colleagues are so generous with this money for a military push to the South in Colombia all in the name of fighting drugs and not willing to put the money into community-based drug programs, anti-drug programs in our own country?

JIM LEHRER: Senator Coverdell?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: We've put the money into....

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: Very little.

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: Billions. I might point out that when we quit the process of interdiction-- I just want to make this point very clear-- in the last eight years, we have seen drug use among nine-year-olds-- nine, ten, eleven and twelve-- double and it's because we allowed more drugs on the street, the price fell, the use went up, and we have a tragedy here. We drove drug use in this country down in the '80s by stopping it and by setting examples. It all went to... in a hat basket in the last eight years. We cannot ignore interdiction, and the only force in the United States that can deal with it is the federal government, period. No state, Minnesota, Georgia, can deal with the international proportions of this struggle.

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: One quick point, Paul. RAND Corporation has done a study. They said it's 23 times more effective to do the community-based treatment program on the demand side than a military action in another country like Colombia. And, second of all, Paul, when you say we're spending money, you cannot dispute and you won't-- because I know you-- our own government reports that right now 80% of kids, of adolescents in this country, that need drug treatment get no treatment whatsoever. Those are the facts. You can't dispute that.

JIM LEHRER: As a practical matter, we have to end this but as a practical matter, Senators Coverdelland Wellstone, you do agree that this is going to become the law of the land probably next week, right -- as the result of the Senate action and the compromise that was worked out this afternoon?

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: I think the decision has been made.

SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: We agree on that and he's a very good Senator. We agree on that too.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you both very much.

SEN. PAUL COVERDELL: Thank you.

FOCUS -WATER ON MARS

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, signs of water on Mars, a capital punishment in Texas, and a favorite poem.

Terence Smith has the Mars story.

TERENCE SMITH: Last December, NASA received bad news from Mars, when its polar Lander was lost on the planet surface. Today the news from the Mars global Surveyor space raft was so exciting that one scientist said, "it blows my mind." Here to tell us about it is Michael Malin of Malin space science systems in San Diego, and principle investigator analyzing photos from the surveyor. Welcome, Mr. Malin.

MICHAEL MALIN: Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: And congratulations. Tell us what you discovered from these pictures.

MICHAEL MALIN: What we have found is apparent evidence for recent flowing of water across the surface of Mars.

TERENCE SMITH: And by recent, you mean?

MICHAEL MALIN: We don't know how recent. The thing is too young to be able to tell by the usual techniques that we use to date ages on planetary surfaces.

TERENCE SMITH: So this would be important because in the past it was known that there was water on Mars many billions of years ago.

MICHAEL MALIN: Correct.

TERENCE SMITH: But now the suggestion is it might be more recent.

MICHAEL MALIN: Right. We have known that there is ice on Mars, and we have known from photographic evidence that in ancient times, billions of years ago, there were catastrophic floods and river valleys. But we have not had the link between that ancient liquid water on the surface and today's ice, and we think that we've found that link in the pictures we've gotten in the last year.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, we have some of those pictures. And let's take a look at them, and perhaps you can describe what we're seeing.

MICHAEL MALIN: Sure.

TERENCE SMITH: The first of these is, I gather, going to be on the cover of the journal "Science." What does it show?

MICHAEL MALIN: Well, I think your viewers can see what it shows. It's a gully. It's actually several gullies. These are big. The bar in the lower right corner shows a distance of about two city blocks. So these are about a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. And the upper part, as you see in the upper part of this picture, is an area where the gully walls have collapsed. And the material from that collapse has spread out towards us down the channels, as you can see, at the far left and in the middle center of the image.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. And it certainly looks like that on the bottom. Now the second shows a weeping pattern of these same gullies.

MICHAEL MALIN: Right.

TERENCE SMITH: Explain that.

MICHAEL MALIN: This picture shows that these don't occur in isolation, that they often occur many in the same location. And you can see a layer of rock that's actually about 100 meters thick -- about the size of a football field-- only vertically in relief-- from which we see these gullies emanating. And this is characteristic on the Earth, of water seeping out along the base of an impermeable or a layer through which water cannot percolate or move through. And it seeps out on the surface and flows down and carves these small gullies.

TERENCE SMITH: It creates patterns like this. The third is the map of the seepage sites that you have. Explain that.

MICHAEL MALIN: Yeah, the map shows probably the most puzzling aspect of finding these features. And that is, they're not where we would have expected, based on the atmospheric re and temperature on Mars. Mars is very cold, its atmospheric pressure is very low. And there are only a few places where liquid water could exist on the surface today, without explosively evaporating or boiling away. The darker zone in this map is where we would have expected to find features that were formed by liquid water. But, in fact, you'll see that all the small white dots occur in areas exclusive of that darker zone. So these features form pole-ward, or away from the pole, away from the equator, and they actually form on surfaces that also look away from the equator. So they're the coldest surfaces, rather than the warmest surfaces, and that's our biggest problem in explaining.

TERENCE SMITH: So that's really surprising.

MICHAEL MALIN: Yeah, it's very surprising.

TERENCE SMITH: Now this next is a photo that includes actually three images that show the age, the respective age of the gullies.

MICHAEL MALIN: This one shows in part the ages, and in part the different mechanisms that we considered. The picture on the left shows a canyon wall. The picture in the middle shows a crater wall. And the picture on the right shows one of our gullies. And you can see that the ones on the left and middle have these very faint streaks coming down. And that's a typical dry mass wasting, or mass land sliding process on Mars. Whereas, the one on the right is really different from it. And that's what caught our attention, that these are very different from other features on Mars.

TERENCE SMITH: This last image is a graphic depiction. And this is your chance to explain to us just what you think is happening here.

MICHAEL MALIN: Okay. The... we have a hypothesis. This is a story that scientists sort of weave together from the various pieces of evidence. And we put this hypothesis together, and we publish it in scientific journals in the hope that the scientific community will evaluate it, critique it, find where we've made mistakes, perhaps find better evidence or alternative explanations. This model is the best guess we can come up with right now. And the idea is that there is a layer beneath the surface of Mars that is conducting water horizontally to escarpments, where the layer is cut by the wall of the escarpment and the water can leak out. But as I said earlier, the water's going to evaporate very rapidly. And in evaporating, it will cool the rock and actually cause any further water to freeze and form an ice barrier. But the water deep inside the rock is still moving laterally and still building up pressure behind this ice wall. What we think happens is that at some point, critical pressure is reached, the ice barrier is broken and the water behind that barrier comes flooding out in a very short-lived, almost flash flood-like event, that spreads rock, debris, and ice down the slope, undermines the upper slope, causes it to collapse, as well, and creates the gully and the channel that we saw in the earlier picture.

TERENCE SMITH: Is there another possible explanation or explanations for this? Could it be lava, could it be something else other than water?

MICHAEL MALIN: It's probably not lava, because we don't find any other associated volcanic features with these land forms. And they occur inside craters and in faulted areas wherewe don't think the volcanism can occur. We have searched very hard our minds and other analogies to find some other mechanism. One may be that there is trapped gas in the surface, that is periodically released and it fluidizes the material. I think the key is that we have evidence that some fluid transported material and cuts these channels. We're not quite sure what the fluid is. It could be gas fluidizing dirt, or it could be liquid water.

TERENCE SMITH: If it's water, if it's liquid water, water in liquid form, is . what's the significance of that?

MICHAEL MALIN: Well, there's the whole range of significance. To a geologist, it means that there is yet another material process that can shape the surface of Mars, one which we had never dreamed was active on Mars. And as a geologist and geomorphologist who studies how things look on planets, that's very exciting. To the people who are studying the... or are participating in the search for life elsewhere in the universe, clearly the existence of liquid water on Mars is important because it's one of the necessary, if not sufficient elements in the equation for life.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Because...certainly on this planet, if you have water and energy, you generally have life.

MICHAEL MALIN: That's right. And if those same rules would hold on Mars-- and there's no reason to expect or not that that would be the case for Mars-- but if it did hold, then the fact that we have now found one of the critical elements of that equation is an important thing.

TERENCE SMITH: Does this have significance also for the prospects of exploration of Mars?

MICHAEL MALIN: Yes. That was the next thing I wanted to say. Water is an extremely valuable resource. For human exploration, you can use it for water to drink, you can use it to extract oxygen for breathing. You can use extracted oxygen and hydrogen in fuel cells to transport power for electricity. And it also, hydrogen and oxygen is a propellant to bring you back to Earth. So it is one of the most valuable resources you could find on another planet.

TERENCE SMITH: Now what you've found, of course, is evidence that there was water, or you think it's water -- liquefied form, not... You haven't found such water.

MICHAEL MALIN: No, we have not found the water. What we have found is evidence that very strongly suggests that water in the near recent past has flowed across the surface.

TERENCE SMITH: What happens next? What are the next steps now in following on from this information?

MICHAEL MALIN: Well, there are three steps. We have Mars Global Surveyor, it is still at Mars, it is still taking pictures. It's an asset that we will use to try to test the hypothesis by looking for changes, and that might tell us how young or old these were by looking for the amalgam material that was transported, which would tell us perhaps whether it was water or this gas hypothesis. There are future missions, including the Mars Surveyor 2001, Mars 2003 missions, which may take experiments to Mars that would test part of the hypothesis. There's a European mission, the Mars Express, that has a radar sounder that may be able to detect the water. And of course, given the reshaping of the Mars exploration program that is presently going on at NASA, and among its advisors, I would expect that in the fall when that new program is formulated, that this will bear on some of the missions beyond 2003, that are coming down the pike.

TERENCE SMITH: So this is the beginning of an exciting story, not the end of it.

MICHAEL MALIN: Oh, absolutely.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Michael Malin, thank you very much.

MICHAEL MALIN: Thank you.

FOCUS - INADEQUATE DEFENSE?

JIM LEHRER: Now the Texas death penalty case and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: In a case that has generated national controversy, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles announced this afternoon it would not intervene to stop the scheduled execution of Death-Row inmate Gary Graham.

LARRY FITZGERALD, Spokesman, Texas Department of Criminal Justice: The members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles have completed their consideration of the clemency petition of Gary Graham, also known as Shaka Shankofa. Following a full and careful review of the petition, a majority of the Board has decided not to recommend a 120-day reprieve, commutation of the death sentence to a lesser penalty, or a conditional pardon.

MARGARET WARNER: Graham was convicted of murder 19 years ago for the shooting death of 53-year-old Bobby Lambert during an apparent attempted robbery in the parking lot of this Houston supermarket. Though there was no physical evidence linking Graham to the crime, the jury found him guilty based on the testimony of one eyewitness who says she saw him through the windshield of her car that night. The witness says she's still convinced Graham is the man she saw.

BERNADINE SKILLERN, Eyewitness: (last week) I'm not that poor black woman they're sadly mistaken. I saw Mr. Graham shoot and kill Mr. Lambert on the parking lot in 1981. No one ever inferred to me that it was any one particular person. I promise you with my word it did not happen that way. I saw that young man walk up and shoot that man.

MARGARET WARNER: Yet two other witnesses, Sherian Etuk and Ronald Hubbard, both store employees at the time, said they saw the shooter too, and it was not Graham. But Graham's lawyer never called them to testify.

SHERIAN ETUK: (Monday) I gave my statement to the police within two days of the shooting. I never heard anything back, ever.

MARGARET WARNER: Accounts questioning the competence of Graham's trial lawyer, Ronald Mock, have drawn national attention to Graham's case. Graham's new lawyer, Richard Burr, explained.

RICHARD BURR, Lawyer for Gray Graham: There were store employees who saw the shooter for 15 or 20 minutes over that long a period before the shooting happened who are absolutely certain that Gary Graham did not do this. That evidence was not heard because it was not investigated.

MARGARET WARNER: Last week, members of the New Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam took to the streets of Houston to protest the scheduled execution.

SPOKESMAN: We believe this brother is innocent. We believe this brother committed no crime.

MAN SHOUTING: That's right!

SPOKESMAN: We believe this brother is just an innocent young black man who was too poor to afford an adequate and thorough defense.

MARGARET WARNER: This week, Texas Governor George W. Bush's presidential campaign events were disrupted by protesters demanding that he stay Graham's execution. But Bush said because Graham received a temporary reprieve from a previous governor, he didn't have the power to spare Graham's life unless the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended it. Bush spoke about the case yesterday.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: No case is an easy case. Obviously those that get a lot of public attention increase the degree of difficulty. I understand the emotions of the death penalty-- I do. My job is to uphold the laws of the state of Texas. I'm going to do that.

MARGARET WARNER: During Bush's five years as governor, the state of Texas has carried out 134 executions-- the most in the nation.

MARGARET WARNER: Now four perspectives on the Graham case and the issue of competent and incompetent counsel in death penalty cases. Jordan Steiker, Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Justice Law at the University of Texas Law School and co-director of the school's Capital Punishment Law Clinic. He worked with Gary Graham's attorneys in the early stages of his appeal. Morgan Reynolds, director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research institute in Dallas. Bryan Stevenson, a longtime activist on behalf of Death Row inmates. He's director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, which promotes racial and economic equality in the judicial system. And Paul Cassell, a professor of law at the University of Utah. He has written and lectured extensively on criminal justice reform and the rights of crime victims.

Jordan Steiker, as we talk now, unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Gary Graham will be put to death tonight. You don't believe that's just. Why?

JORDAN STEIKER, University of Texas School of Law: I think that this case has a tremendous... It puts a tremendous burden on the criminal justice system because it turns out that at trial Graham did not receive the kind of adversarial representation that would make us confident about the outcome. And evidence has surfaced after the trial, which was available at trial, that should have been presented. That evidence calls into doubt the accuracy of the verdict and it seems very troublesome to go ahead with an execution with as many doubts as there are about its accuracy.

MARGARET WARNER: What specifically would you point to that makes you think he didn't get competent defense?

JORDAN STEIKER: Well, there are a number of things. First, the lynchpin to the state's case was the one eyewitness who claims to have seen Graham at the time of the crime. That eyewitness was put through a very suggestive procedure in which Graham was the only one in the photographic lineup that had the quality that many of the witnesses had testified about, that it was a clean-shaven person; he was the only clean-shaven person in that array. And then later when the witness identified Graham at, you know, in a real lineup, in a face-to-face lineup, she had seen Graham before in that photographic array. That's very troublesome because it seems as though there are reasons that she might have picked Graham apart from having seen him at the crime. But apart from that witness, there were other witnesses who saw the crime. None of those witnesses appeared before the jury, and a number of other things were not put before the jury. The fact that the gun that Graham was... had on his person at the time of his arrest was not the murder weapon is important physical evidence that also was not before the jury. This was simply not an adversarial case. His counsel did not mount an effective defense and many of the jurors now who hear of this evidence say quite confidently that they would not have voted for a conviction and they would not have voted for a death sentence.

MARGARET WARNER: Morgan Reynolds, do you think all of casts on the quality of the defense that Gary Graham had?

MORGAN REYNOLDS, National Center for Policy Analysis: No, I don't, really because, of course that's a standard appeal claim and it's not been upheld in 36 judicial and executive forums. What the defense was confronted with was the usual problem, and that is, they had nothing to work with. They didn't put on any defense witnesses because, if you do, that opens up wide avenues for the prosecution under cross-examination to introduce other evidence. So the best tactic really is to try to undermine the testimony of prosecution witnesses and raise a reasonable doubt somewhere. Beyond that, of course, we've got basically overwhelming evidence about Mr. Graham's guilt subsequently in terms of he's never, in 19 years, been able to raise any compelling evidence to the contrary. Even on June 9th, he wouldn't take a polygraph, which is for a defense attorney kind of surprising. Here the guy is near the end and he's not even willing to take a lie detection test, which may or may not have any validity, but the point is it shows you how they have no compelling evidence.

MARGARET WARNER: But let me go back to this issue of whether he had a competent defense. Explain why you said usually a defense attorney would try to challenge the witnesses, the prosecution witnesses. Why wouldn't a trial defense attorney put on two eyewitnesses who say they're ready to contradict the prosecution's one?

MORGAN REYNOLDS: They weren't willing to say that at the time. It was six years later, after the trial, that they changed their story. Their stories simply... you can talk about them in the media or other forums but in courts of law they're easily demolished. So this is just people changing their mind long after the event. They're not credible. They're not credible witnesses.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Steiker, let me go back to Mr. Steiker on a couple of points you raised, Mr. Reynolds. Isn't it hard this far down the road after a trial to second-guess a trial attorney's, a defense attorney's decisions in the course of a trial?

JORDAN STEIKER: I think it's always hard to second-guess strategic decisions. There's no evidence that these decisions by Ron Mock were strategic. He simply had not done the kind of investigation that would put him in a position to make strategic decisions. He wasn't aware of the circumstances of the identification and he didn't raise those issues at trial when the one eyewitness against Graham was on the stand. This is not a case of strategic decision-making.

MARGARET WARNER: Is he an experienced... he is an experienced death penalty or criminal defense lawyer, is he not?

JORDAN STEIKER: He's quite experienced. Much of Death Row is filled with his former clients.

MORGAN REYNOLDS: Please note there were two co-counsels defending Gary Graham. Chester Thornton was the other one. It was just not Ron Mock, but only Ron Mock has been attacked systematically apparently because they believe he's the more vulnerable attorney.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me turn to you, Bryan Stevenson. How typical is it in death penalty cases to at least have the suggestion that the defendant did not get a vigorous defense?

BRYAN STEVENSON, Equal Justice Initiative: It's very common. We've just seen a study released last week that shows that in nearly two-thirds of the cases where the death penalty has been imposed, the cases were reversed. The single most common cause of reversal was ineffective lawyering, but I think it's important to focus on the facts surrounding Mr. Mock's representation. This was not just a lawyer trying to figure out what's the best thing to do. This man was three years out of law school when he represented Gary Graham. He has been repeatedly sanctioned and disciplined by the Texas State Bar. He was even jailed once for failing to meet his professional obligations. He brags about having more people on Death Row than any other defense lawyer. He brags about failing criminaldefense law. When you have that kind of advocacy in these cases, there is going to be unreliability. Of the 131 people executed in the State of Texas, nearly a third of the lawyers in those cases have been subsequently disbarred, suspended or disciplined for poor lawyering. That creates the questions and the doubts that we're seeing here.

MARGARET WARNER: Paul Cassell, that does not sound like the kind of lawyer I would want if I were in a capital case, someone with that kind of record.

PAUL CASSELL, University of Utah Law School: Remember, there were two lawyers here. And it's easy to make allegations about these sorts of things after the fact. One of the facts that hasn't been talked about tonight is that Gary Graham is a confessed killer. He told a number of his victims that he was going to shoot them as he shot other people. He told the bailiff right after he was sentenced to death that next time he would not leave any witnesses. So that's one important fact. Another important fact is that he pled guilty to a crime spree surrounding this particular affair. I think one of the speakers you had in your opening segment said this gentleman who has never committed any crime at all, in fact he pled guilty to a string of armed robberies right around this time. So he's a very, very serious offender. The most important point is that we have in place in Texas and other states a process to look at these claims. We've heard tonight some claims that I think the evidence doesn't support. But the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole looked very carefully at all this evidence, and you've heard their decision.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think though that there is or is not a larger problem, particularly indigent defendants in capital cases do not get top legal representation -- as Mr. Stevenson suggested?

PAUL CASSELL: Well, a number of states have put in place devices to make sure they get good representation. Two lawyers, for example, is the norm in Texas cases and in many other case, there was also very skilled, separate appellate counsel. And remember, all the claims that Gary Graham did not get adequate representation were carefully reviewed by courts of appeal. Those courts concluded that those claims were not accurate, that Gary Graham did receive a fair trial, that Gary Graham was guilty.

MARGARET WARNER: What about that, Mr. Stevenson?

BRYAN STEVENSON: Well, I don't think anybody familiar with our system of justice would dispute that we have a system of justice in America, a criminal justice system that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than poor and innocent. There are some three thousand, seven hundred people on Death Row today. Hundreds of them have no legal representation right now to present their claims to courts. It is easy to make allegations when you see lawyers as poorly prepared to defend their clients as Mr. Mock was at his trial. But it's also easy to deal with these problems. And I don't know why a state like Texas or a country like ours would hesitate to make the kinds of improvements that are possible, that are doable, that we can accomplish very quickly to improve defense services in these cases if we're going to commit ourselves to continuing to carry out these executions. It's just not that difficult a problem to solve if we're really committed to ensuring fairness and reliability. And, fortunately, we're too often committed to carrying out these executions as fast as possible. We push fairness and reliability to the side.

MARGARET WARNER: Jordan Steiker, let me ask you one additional question aboutthe Gary Graham case. What about the point that he has had 19 years' worth of appeals - why -- was all of this presented to higher courts and if not, why not?

JORDAN STEIKER: Well, some of it was presented to higher courts and some of it was reviewed and some of it wasn't reviewed. But I think the bottom line is there's tremendous evidence that wasn't presented at trial. There's reason to believe that there was no effective defense mounted at trial, and under those circumstances, it seems reasonable to the court of criminal appeals for the fifth circuit to order a new trial so that we can be confident about its outcome. I was involved in some of the 19 years of litigation. Some of the issues being litigated were highly technical. And the technicalities were offered by the state. The state was arguing earlier in this case the fact that the Texas statute didn't allow the jury to give Graham a lesser sentence on the basis of his youth shouldn't be able to be raised because it was an issue that would have established new constitutional law. That's the sort of thing that was going on during the 19 years. It wasn't as though a careful review of the facts of this case ever came forward.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. I'd like to go back to a broader question that was raised just a minute ago by Mr. Stevenson. I'll start with you, Mr. Reynolds: Do you think we should somehow ensure that defendants in capital cases, where the death penalty is a possibility, absolutely, positively get excellent legal counsel from the outset?

MORGAN REYNOLDS: Well, that would be nice to have a law or constitutional provisions that we had the best of everything all the time. It's just totally unrealistic. What is a lower bar and quite relevant is that they have competent counsel, competent legal representation. There's no way to legislate and guarantee the best of the best for every capital murder defendant.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And, Mr. Stevenson, you made the suggestion, what would you suggest specifically?

BRYAN STEVENSON: Well, I mean, we could restore funding for the resource centers that were providing legal representation to Death Row prisoners in this country until 1995; Congress eliminated that funding in 1995 and many of them closed. We could ensure that the ABA standards for criminal defense representation were enforced in the states that have the death penalty. We could increase the rates of compensation so that in the states like Alabama and Mississippi, you're not being paid $1,000 or $2,000 a case. And we could commit ourselves to never executing someone in a case, in a situation like this one where it's clear to virtually everybody familiar with the facts of this case, if Mr. Graham were given a new trial and provided adequate representation, it is highly unlikely that he would be convicted of capital murder and certainly that he would be sentenced to death. To execute somebody with that certainty or with those facts around us is what we ought to avoid ever being in a situation.

MARGARET WARNER: Paul Cassell, do you think the record not just in this case but in the recent reviews of death penalty cases suggest something has to be on this question of the effectiveness of legal counsel for such defendants?

PAUL CASSELL: A number of states have already acted to make sure that Death Row inmates certainly on the appeals process and at trial as well get very excellent representation. That's where I think we have to look at the facts. We've just heard the suggestion that there is grave doubt whether Gary Graham would get a death sentence again. A number of courts have looked at that question. The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole has looked at that question, and they disagree. It's easy for defense attorneys to throw something out. There's a process for reviewing these claims. The process has worked in this case.

MARGARET WARNER: So are you saying you don't think errors are commonly made in these cases due to incompetent legal counsel?

PAUL CASSELL: No, they're not. In fact, the key point is this: The study that Mr. Stevenson cited was unable to cite even a single case of an innocent person who has been executed in this country. We have in place a very, very careful system. That's why there are a number of reversals in capital cases. We give the defendants the benefit of every doubt. But at some point, the system has to call delays to an end. We have to think about the victims in this case. We have to think about the finality of the system. It's been 19 years, and the system I think has given Gary Graham every benefit of the doubt.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. Thank you all four very much.

FINALLY - FAVORITE POEM PROJECT

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, another poem from Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's project of asking Americans to read their favorite poem. Tonight's reader is a Massachusetts fifth grader.

KATHERINE MECHLING, Student: "The Sloth," by Theodore Roethke. "In moving slow, he has no peer. You ask him something in his ear; he thinks about it for a year; and then, before he says a word, there, upside down-- unlike a bird-- he will assume that you have heard a most exasperating lug. But should you call his manner smug, he'll sigh and give his branch a hug. Then off again to sleep he goes; swaying gently by his toes, and you just know he knows, he knows." I'm Katherine Mechling. I'm 11 years old. I live in Lexington, Massachusetts, and I'm in the fifth grade. I do soccer, and softball... (Playing piano) ...and piano... ...and trombone. (Playing trombone) I do dancing. I do singing at my church with a choir. And, well, I used to do horseback riding-- I don't anymore.

KATHERINE'S MOTHER: You have band practice this week, Katherine.

KATHERINE MECHLING: How come I never go to that when we have a piano?

KATHERINE'S MOTHER: Bye-bye.

KATHERINE MECHLING: A lot of kids like the same kind of things as me, and have busy schedules. But it's always nice to get to the weekend. I like to write poetry because, well, for the same reason as I like to read it, because I just like finding words that are, like, you know, interesting and fit well together. I think you just let your, like, imagination just sort of, like, flow anywhere. "The Sloth" by Theodore Roethke. "In moving slow, he has no peer. You ask him something in his ear; he thinks about it for a year; and then, before he says a word there, upside down-- unlike a bird-- he will assume that you have heard; a most exasperating lug. But should you call his manner smug, he'll sigh and give his branch a hug. Then off again to he goes; still swaying gently by his toes, and you just know he knows, he knows." I think it's kind of funny in a way, because you can picture this sloth, you know, and you ask something to him, and he's hanging there upside down, and he thinks about it for a year, and he doesn't say anything to you, but he assumes that you've heard what he's said. But he really hasn't said anything, so you couldn't have heard it. And it's kind of strange. And I like the second-to-last line in the poem, swaying, just, "still swaying gently by his toes," because I think it really sounds like...like it really makes it sound like the sloth is swaying.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday. Convicted killer Gary Graham was scheduled to die by lethal injection tonight in Texas. And First Lady Hillary Clinton won't face charges over her statements about the firings at the White House Travel Office. Independent Counsel Robert Ray said he can't prove she knowingly gave false information. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with Shields and Gigot, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.