Bush Accused Of Politics In Rape Case Texas Governor Denies Pardon To Man Despite Dna Evidence

Rejecting the unanimous recommendation of the state board of pardons and of the judge and prosecutors in the case, Texas Gov. George W. Bush has declined to grant a pardon to a Houston man who spent 12 years in prison for a rape that DNA testing later indicated he did not commit.

The case, in which the forensic evidence points to the man’s innocence but the victim continues to insist that he raped her, has sparked a highly unusual legal fracas and has even taken on political overtones. A lawyer for the convicted man has accused Bush, a potential Republican presidential aspirant, of bending to concerns over the political fallout of pardoning a convicted rapist, even one that prosecutors now say they believe is innocent of the crime.

“He doesn’t want to take any risk that Byrd could become his Willie Horton,” said the lawyer, Randy Schaffer, referring to his client, a 35-year-old carpenter, Kevin James Byrd. Willie Horton was a Massachusetts criminal who raped a woman while he was released on a furlough.

The Horton case was used by the 1988 presidential campaign of Bush’s father, George Bush, to portray his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime.

But Gov. Bush’s spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, dismissed Schaffer’s assertions as absurd, saying that Bush had not ruled out a pardon for Byrd but preferred not to decide until “all other legal remedies have been exhausted.”

Byrd was released on bail this summer by state District Judge Doug Shaver. But under Texas’ legal proceedings, he has not been cleared of the crime, and nearly everyone with the 18-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has urged the governor to simply pardon Byrd.

Hughes called the case “very troubling” and noted that the victim had continued to insist that Byrd was the one who raped her in a 1985 incident in which a stranger attacked her in her bed. She was eight months pregnant, and her 2-year-old daughter was lying beside her.

Police had been unable to crack the case until four months later, when the victim saw Byrd in a grocery store and told her husband that she was looking at the man who had raped her. She gave her account to the police, who arrested Byrd.

And despite some contention at the trial - her initial police report quoted her as saying her assailant was white, while Byrd is black - he was convicted of the crime.