Odell Barnes was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville...

Odell Barnes was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville prison in Texas. He had been convicted for the 1989 murder of Helen Bass in Wichita Falls, Texas. European groups, particularly in France, pleaded with Bush to stop the execution because they believed Barnes, a black man, was the victim of a police frame-up. They donated money to his defence and enlisted the aid of government officials to lobby on his behalf. Jack Lang, chairman of the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee, who had visited Barnes in Texas, said former US President George Bush had written that he had intervened in the case with his son, the Texas governor, who could grant a 30-day delay. But Bush chief of staff Jean Becker said the former president had merely explained the execution process and the possibilities for reprieve in a letter to Lang. Lang disclosed earlier that French President Jacques Chirac had discussed the case with the elder Bush by telephone. A Bush spokesman confirmed the two talked but would not disclose the topic of conversation. After the execution Lang said, "I'm disgusted and indignant. The execution of Odell Barnes is murder. How can Governor Bush seek to be president of the United States after committing such a crime? Who would listen to demands for the respect of human rights throughout the world from the author of such a barbarous act?" "Odell Barnes gave us a tremendous lesson in humanity and courage, which contrasts with the viciousness of the Huntsville killing factory, where human beings are mass-executed," the French politician added. Barnes was the 10th person put to death this year in Texas and the 209th since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982; six years after the Supreme Court scrapped a national death penalty ban. Since Governor Bush, a death penalty supporter, took office in January 1995, 122 people have been executed.