Texas Innocence Project founder to speak at Rice on ‘Can Law Eliminate Evil?‘
Lecture to focus on death penalty in Texas

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

One of the main arguments for the death penalty is that it permanently removes the worst criminals from society. Critics contend that capital punishment, as it is applied in the United States, has failed to accomplish that goal.

	DAVID DOW

David Dow, the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center and founder of the Texas Innocence Network, will discuss the efficacy of the death penalty April 6 at Rice when he presents the Harold E. and Margaret H. Rorschach Lecture in Legal History.

Titled “Can Law Eliminate Evil?”, the lecture will examine problems that have arisen since the death penalty was reinstated in Texas in the 1970s. It is free and open to the public and will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Fondren Library’s Kyle Morrow Room.

Dow ’81 is also the litigation director at the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit law firm providing representation to death-row inmates. He is the author of ”Executed on a Technicality,” ”America’s Prophets: How Judicial Activism Makes America Great” and, most recently, ”The Autobiography of an Execution.”

The lecture is being presented by the Rice University Department of History. For more information, go to http://events.rice.edu/index.cfm?EventRecord=14452.